when people say what do you do i'm basically a hype man and a recruiter so my job is go and get the best talent and and then when they're in make sure that every morning they wake up and go i'm going to smash this so that's basically what i try to do so take us for two safe fence because yeah listen you're here because with the with the growth 100 yeah this is a business that has absolutely rocketed in terms of your growth rate you're doing some amazing stuff tell us about incredibly well so we were i think we were figures you have 14.9 million was it last year 13.9 million ton of last year just closed this year on 25.8 so 75 78 growth somewhere around there where did you close the gross we closed uh well we had to find the figures um draft figures two weeks ago um but we run april to april covid slowed it but effectively the growth rate has been phenomenal um the reason for that is probably and it was the joke earlier when i said i don't really know what say fence does it's because we're going at in several directions at the same time so what i'm trying to do is i'm doing product spread geographical spread and service spread all at the same time so geographical spread we're launching in ireland and the netherlands at the same time we use netherlands as a hub to then reach out to benelux and then into germany and france ireland's kind of our tester of we speak the same language culturally similar so let's make sure that we can run that before we go to a country where english isn't the first language etc so we're testing the model in ireland and then we'll move into northern europe at the same time we're doing product spread so i have a team of three people that sit in london they effectively source and add new products constantly to our product range that's their sole job so we have product spread and then at the same time we have service offerings so safefence originally was e-commerce then we realized e-commerce is race to the bottom you don't offer your customer service it's kind of like anyone can mimic someone else you're not adding as much value you're just price driven so we moved away from that by we're not moved away from that but we had the arm and then we hired what i think is the best sales team in the industry by quite a way you're proud they're incredible no one from industry purposely went no one from industry um but i've got x car sales guys i've got a guy who sold kitchen equipment to restaurants over covid now if that guy can sell yeah if that guy can sell you know yeah so this is really interesting did you is that how it's happened or did you purposefully no not perfect interview interview with that so i when people say what do you do i'm basically a hype man and a recruiter so my job is go and get the best talent and and then when they're in make sure that every morning they wake up and go i'm going to smash this yeah so that's basically what i try to do george you mentioned sorry to interrupt you mentioned that you talked in the car with your friends about apps and whatever else so why fencing because you did you have any experience in it or like what was it that made you go into that did you see a gap in the market so we did an app which failed miserably raised a load of money and failed miserably there the fencing thing comes back to um so to tell safe fences stories people say single founder single shareholder old georgia's done well it's not the entire story so my father who's kind of my idol is the reason that i wanted to go into it so um he did a number of things so he was mom left when he was young he was raised by his dad and his uh it was a butcher and his older sisters he becomes a drops out of school becomes a milkman then he's a painted decorator then he's selling jeans on a market stand i mean she'd interview him it's great he wouldn't talk about himself then he has a shop then he moves into uh going to auctions and liquidations and he's buying and selling stuff before he's even got it and then eventually moves into steel stock holding so buying and selling steel now when he's buying and selling steel uh this company owe him some money and they basically make a fence which has a tubular insert which the mesh goes inside so that it's safe safe fence got it um so it looks like it looks like it's all me doesn't it's not so um i'm working for him as a salesman at the time and this business is just it's going under so he's basically like i'm going to close it and get rid of all the assets and i say oh well you know i'm living with mom and dad at the time cause i'm trying to start a company can i sell all that stuff for you yeah you sell it and you can keep the money golden ticket so i put it on ebay and it sells on ebay overnight and you just think hang on ebay marks things up like 14 and i'm still selling it and the product's not incredible so distributors won't take it we've been trying to sell the distributors and dishes which just won't take the product okay we'll forget the distribution i'll be the distributor and so i built the website for that which cost me like one and a half grand or something crazy and the first sale you get online is elation it's the best feeling in the world it's so good and so you still remember it do you oh yeah like yeah i could rewind immediately yeah yeah and um we start to sell it start sell it online and then that goes incredible and sort of obviously none of those products we really do anymore say fence evolved into many different things but that was the i was looking for the next big idea you know i was looking for the next um tesla or the next you know twitter or something i was looking in tech space really i was looking in fintech or looking in the environment i was looking at what's hot i guess and what's cool to be an entrepreneur in and then fell on my lap was as a gift basically from my father can you get rid of that for me all of a sudden hang on i think this is something and then it was just the execution from there so is that the sort of your usp the fact that you've cut out but the distributor and you are that or um well no because we actually now work with a lot of distributors the irony being that i think of our top 20 customers seven of them are distributors so um say fence obviously that was just for that one product which wasn't actually that great a product and that's why the distributors wouldn't take it and i had to sell it that way um so i wouldn't say that that's the usp no the usp is i absolutely hate it when people say oh you you do everything called your jack of all trades or something like that we're not we are incredibly good at fencing and that sounds crazy it's not the sexiest thing in the world i like it it's been incredible we are really good at it really i've never heard it before um the things we are good at we are very very good at and the way i describe our business model is kind of like a spearhead um like a triangle so we go into a new business there's got to be a reason why do i want to deal with you why do i want to deal with safe fence i've already got three fencing suppliers why do i need you so the spearhead is we are the best at what we do we will be cheaper than anyone we would deliver it quicker than anyone would be better quality products we spearhead that is what we are golden at that's what my sales guys are driven at but once we're through the door once that spears in all the other products can come with it so then it's okay well i need that fencing which is big and bolt big and bulky and the transport costs a fortune yes can you shove all these little items on they're gonna be free of charge transport yeah you could go to a specialist in it but you're gonna get paid double transport or because it's not our core product range we don't need to make the margin they need to make on it so we can be cost effective and beyond right we send the whole product range in that's the idea love it and then as well as sending the whole product range in what we then do we're saying we're diversifying in the way that we the offerings to customers so obviously e-commerce sales then i built my sales team then we went into hire then we went into installations we'll come we'll install it for you we'll set it up we'll take it down at the end and now we've just launched an environmentally friendly brand which the idea is instead of site consumables where you go at the end of project they just stick it in the scrap or they etc will come erect it take it down at the end take it back repair it send it to your next site when you're ready for it and then we'll plant trees to offset the carbon emissions of delivery and collection and then you try and it's by no means going to be the process won't be carbon neutral will offset it and make it carbon neutral but the idea is that that is 100 times better if you're an industry leader at the moment you have to say in my industry how can i be better in that space and so by offering those multiple services higher buybacks installations e-commerce direct sales guys out on the road you can get offer the whole range of products with all of the services behind them so that was kind of the methodology behind it i just love the thought i i love what i'm hearing here in terms of have you ever seen anyone get excited about fencing i just george can i just say that this is this is why my girlfriend sits and just goes what are we doing this is the best job in the world because you're just feeding off of people's energy and excitement and their vision and their drive and it's just it's brilliant but that clearly is your i think that's your usp your excite your belief but your excitement and passion in what you're doing that's why i imagine when you go to people you say this is the best in the market that's why i was saying our sales team is so important because they have that so they go into a customer with that enthusiasm with that if something goes wrong they care yeah because we want to be the best and when you have that i'd say that is probably the usp is that how many people in that industry walk through the door and care what they're doing a lot of them are i'm selling temporary fencing i'm getting paid x a year it's a job for me i get a company car it's a comfortable lifestyle um i think i'm nearly the oldest at our firm um and i've just turned 30 most of them are mid early 20s so they've got that driving ambition they've come on board early days they've seen the company go like that it we could be selling toilet seats toothbrushes it doesn't matter what the product range is they go i want to be part of that and they join and they make it happen because of that enthusiasm and i'd say yeah that is probably in the sales side that is the usp to it just loving what it is but i think you're very genuine and the fact that you know you believe that your products are the best because any everyone says we've got the best products we've got the cheapest and all that but you have got that what we do we are the best so george you have 2016 you incorporated the business so you're now looking at a 25 million ton of business that you've created which blows my mind so what has been some of the biggest challenges that you've had to you've had to deal with and counter overcome as part of this growth yeah so all businesses kind of have their own intricacies you know if you're a fintech business it's going to be regulation or something like that in our space it's that to grow from 15 to 25 million just sounds like a number and actually to sell an extra 10 million pounds worth of equipment is very easy when you're good at it and you've got repeat customers who like your service it's quite easy but to operationally shift 10 million pounds worth of kits especially being to sew an arctic load of harris fencing sorry if nobody knows what that is an arctic load of you know the big mesh panels you see around building sites yeah okay they're like 25 quid each right so you can fit five grand six grand on an arctic vehicle which is the biggest vehicle you can get on the road so how many arctics have you got to physically shift to shift 10 million pounds worth of kit so operationally it's been i'd say about nine twelve months ago we went through so we're going ebbs and flows you know nothing's ever a straight line and we out of nowhere and i still don't know what it was i think it was there was massive supply chain shortages last year and people physically can get hold of the goods and we could we made a few good moves and we could yeah and so our sales spiked and i was doing 4 am till 7 pm every night and then going home working from the computer it was ridiculous i'm completely burnt out because i laughed sorry just to say that's not two hours what you're doing because i didn't have the infrastructure in place i didn't i took it for granted we'd grown from say five to ten fifteen million and it was relatively smooth sailing because we'd bought a new site with tripled our warehousing space and what i didn't realize is that i needed to now be 12 months further on i need to be 18 months further on and so i thought our growth will come to us it'll be okay we'll we drop ship or traditionally drop ships a lot a lot of our products we can grow and we can scale and we can leverage other people's platforms and it'll be fine but then obviously supply chain shortages hit no no we need to stock all of this we can't drop ship this anymore because we need to secure the supply yeah so overnight our operation had to expand i think we were going into covid we were six or seven people and coming out the other side we were 48 49. because all of a sudden we had to do that warehousing we had to do that facilitation we went from zero to i think we've got 24 26 trucks now on the road so overnight we had to expand rapidly and have the infrastructure in place and so there was three months there that were just i ran my guys absolutely into the floor and they were incredible um joey who joined me when i think he was 18 or 19 has been with me throughout i mean the guy gets in is ahead of my the yard to dispatch and he was getting in at 5 a.m and then he meant to clock off at say 2 and he was working till 6 on the night picking stacking packing like they were what's his name joey joey he sounds awesome i've got some really so i've got a lot of guys with me a lot of them are very local so if west brom play on a sunday night no one's turning to work on the monday it's an absolute it's an absolute nightmare any cut matches i'm like please please get knocked out please get knocked out please get knocked out they'll be miserable but they'll turn up to work um so yeah so um i've got a lot of good guys who've been with me a long time that makes a massive difference as well so startup if you can retain staff rather than burn them and churn that makes a huge that's a great platform to go off and so we had to we luckily we recruited a we call it head of people and her job was to basically ensure that everyone mentally in the right space is trained correctly and then to hire the next range of talent and that basically transformed our us being able to catch up with growth yes so you hire in advance and you're almost hired for the next stage of growth well ahead okay brilliant so i mean this year we're obviously 25 odd million pounds spent but i think i've already got pipelined we will spend on infrastructure over 9 million this year which doesn't add up right but that's because i think we will be we'll continue at minimum 50 for the next three years i think you know so yeah we will we talked obviously that you hire in advance so what do you do to keep your staff because you said that you know they're real brand ambassadors they've got your and they love the product so how do you get them to be like that is it drugs or you know do you pay them a ridiculous amount because it's really tough so i it's actually called i think it's called the windsor castle okay so attached to so attached to our hq is a pub right right it's called i think it's called the windsor castle but we've renamed it the safe castle we've got plaque on the wall so we've renamed it the safe castle and every friday there's 30 odd lads and it doesn't matter whether you are our top sales guy or whether you deliver our goods or whether you pick and pack in the yard whatever it is they're in there doing au vodka and sambuca at seven o'clock on the night and i know that sounds stupid but they they they love it so i had it's probably my highlight personal highlight of say fence so far is i had my 30th birthday may 21st you know a short time ago and congratulations i knew something was up because i got three three text messages in a day from a sales direct saying she would go for a drink after work so i'm thinking okay so something's up here and my mom's not talking to me so something might be happening so we walked to the safe castle um and there's like i think there's 50 or 60 people there we've put 80 pound in the jukebox so we can play our own musical tonight there's madrid on tap and everyone's just having the time of their life i think we're there till 1am and it was just brilliant and this is just local boozer next door and it just feels authentic yeah it feels natural and that bringing people together they love it it's great it's not um as you grow i think there can be a problem with departments doing their departments work and oh they're another department rather than being oh we're all safe fence so i'll i do customer service i don't do sales so i'll put it through to a sales guy to help you with that question and what we've built hopefully or what i think we've built is this community where everybody's in it for safe fence they're not in it for their department or for themselves they're all in it and when you have four or five years success and people succeed alongside that then it's self-fulfilling because new people that join go oh yeah well 12 months he was a sales exec and now he's a sales manager and he's got these customers and he's doing this and he's getting paid this commission and then itself that it's self-fulfilling it looks like that excites you that that's happening you love it it's the best in the world that's that's a great part of it you're clearly a brilliant salesperson and you built an army of great salespeople are there any tips here you're looking when did he join i think 13 or 14. ben buckley my sales director huge shout out to him by the way big shout out to ben big shout out to ben um we weren't that close to school um we didn't mix in the same circles uh but we left and i remember i was about 18 19 i was talking to a friend about oh if we set for business what would we do who would you recruit from school and i said i would recruit that guy that guy he cannot take no financial benefit he is incredible right and so he joined me i think about uh six nine months in when we started to have some success and track rate was on like a million first year i thought okay i need to leverage sales now i've got something that can go to someone and convince them to come on board and so i think i mean he's never played too hard to get i think had to take him out for dinner about three or four times and he had an okay job at the time i think he was selling health care or he was doing something else with with somebody else and i literally had to beg and plead him i was like you need to come and work for me i've got something special here but i'm not a sales guy i can run operations i can run buying but i i love buying so my dad always said if you can buy it right you can sell it so i've always focused on that end what i'm not great at is if someone says no we're okay with our current supplier okay i'll move to the next ben doesn't move to next no no no no okay i understood that any chance could come see you no okay fine no problem then he's on linkedin messaging somebody else at the firm then he's doing this that the guy just breaks down barriers he's absolutely relentless i think we've all got a bit of adhd but i think he i think he definitely is he is a supreme power he's a drill sergeant and he's the opposite of me so i'm quite hard he's extremely soft so the way that he leads his sales team is purely by example he doesn't go if their sales figures down he he does not do the whole like that's it all in the sales office we need a chat what's going on here what's going on with this account he goes sales down with that account no problem give me the phone oh wow absolutely drills it wow incredible he'll go out to see a client and then next week he's like what the hell is going on here boom now so there's so there's a fine line between being persistent then all of a sudden people going look you're getting too much yep get up get out i'm sure he crosses that line oh really i'm wondering it's okay to cross the line in my opinion it's okay to cross the line because if the customers already said no to you then it's a no so you've been positioned and going listen mate you've been too persistent it's still a no so you've not lost anything in my eyes granted if it's custom that you've got and then you annoy them and you lose the business then that's bad but when you're trying to break down barriers i'd rather veer on the side and he's not annoying by any stretch but if you had to pick being over persistent against not trying hard enough then be over persistent because no one ever built anything not working hard enough so i think i think i think it does you know if someone's that passionate and you know not relentless but like keeps on going eventually people do listen if you've given everything and maybe relentless is the wrong word it's it's a it's um it's persistence and obviously he's laughing and joking with the guys he's not um you know if anyone ever said listen you're calling me too much leave me alone 100 you know what i mean never go never go down that line but then go no no we're okay with our current contract fine thank you okay no problem then he sends a wagon with some samples on oh we just thought we might just thought you might want to see them got it when's your renewal up okay your annuals up in september because then they're laughing and joking yeah and then at christmas sends them some chocolates with oh you know i hope you're still happy with it you know he just works never so george a big part of what we're doing is celebrating the stories of the people that have created these amazing businesses but that's never to forget the incredible people that they bring with them and therefore these people then become a part of a bigger entrepreneurial journey together of course which i think is just a beautiful thing about what founders create and how they therefore create this amazing group of people that therefore binds this vision yeah how have you therefore what's your what's your perception towards creating that entrepreneurial vibe in your culture but you know what if people move on how do you feel about that um so i have no problem with people moving on when it's the right time for them i think the key is to build an environment where a you give people enough rope so if i especially in an entrepreneurial environment if you won't let people be entrepreneurial then it's all reliant on you yeah so i think giving people enough space you know ben came in early doors as uh sales director and he's had free remit to build his team free remit to move into new product bases free room to take on contracts and do what he needs i've got various people in other positions where i give them enough rope to do what they need to do but i think when you have good quality people the key is to you'd rather be part of their story than have them leave or have them go somewhere else so you you make room for them and you make room for their ambitions of what they want to do yeah and you need to respect that work is for me it's everything but for most people it's you know it fits into their life it might be twenty percent of their life it might be eight percent of their life but there's other things there's other other move moving parts yeah apologies for that there's other moving parts and um i think as long as you make room and you're aware of those that's the key i think that was one of the reasons we had a head of people was to realize okay well what's actually going on in people's lives and how do we then make it fit with their ambition where they want to go who they want to be yeah okay it's quite an early high that ahead of people for obviously very quite you know and that seems like a sort of google thing when you've got like a thousand employees so yes it's interesting that you adopted that question yes it was it was way too early really um in terms of oh that's what you should do at that process for us it was vital because we couldn't i was spending all day on linkedin or on read or speaking to recruiters or and i wasn't focusing on building the business right so i need people um that have a skill set but i need to be able to be on the front line once they've joined i don't want to get them in the door and then forget about them yeah i need so in our sales office i sit in the middle of the sales office i don't do any selling but i sit bang in the middle of the sales office and i'm literally all day long like i'm in everybody's business all day long i'm sure customers probably hate it they're probably on the phone and they're hearing me go yeah do a deal on it yeah we can do that everybody's business but that just gets me excited i don't get a thrill of selling to customers i'm not a sales person but i love the buzz when when somebody wins an order and then it's on the group whatsapp chat and everybody's going crazy or we do something new we sell um we call them bingo cards so you add something new to the website and then it sells out of nowhere it's like bingo we didn't even know that was on there that's great so and then also never gets talked about bingo cards also everyone's on the phone trying to sell this and then obviously like hang on there's a market here there's a market in aluminium van ramps who knew there's a market there but you find it so one of the great things about safe fence and having such a massive product spread is that you might notice i'm quite erratic and i get bored quite quickly i have to keep going and going and going yeah so if i set up a business when it probably got to 10 15 million i'd quit and gone but with safe fence because every two three months we're going to a new product range it's like starting a new business ah go find your supply chain yeah go find your customer base how does the marketing work do we stock it do we drop ship it do we work through other distributors do we work to end users or do we import do we go through our local supply chain how do we work it and then i bring that into the business so i'm constantly working on new sectors or new ways of selling things and then bringing them back if that makes sense um so i'm kind of going out and exploring so it wouldn't be a number that made you sell it would be the boredom so like if you suddenly went to work so it sounds like you've got the adrenaline of like a sort of trading floor but in like sort of fencing and like bingo and whatever but you know if you went to work and you were bored would that make you sell as opposed to the numbers okay straight away because i think i've got a million ideas and so the point at which i think that another idea excites me more and has more potential than i would consider it i don't think anything even comes close to what we've currently got and what we're currently doing um but that would be it would be boredom or it would be there's something i just can't pass pass on you know talking about you did an article uh back in 2021 that i read and one of the things that really grabbed me which is really looking forward to especially meeting with with the way you were talking about i really you said i really do believe this is a billion pound business yeah now now that i've met you yeah and now i can see what's driving you well somebody really see how this sounds crazy because people look at the marketplace and they go well that's not a billion dollar marketplace you basically have to own the marketplace to be it but then like i was saying earlier if you look at product spread if you look at the ways you sell if you look at geographical areas it is that it can 100 go there there's also multiple businesses that you pull together so when i said this could be a billion dollar business we're working on a number of things under the group which i think will play huge parts of that so obviously being able to buy stocks store distribute a billion pounds worth of non-mechanical plant which is our primary product range is very very very difficult but create things like marketplaces where you customers and manufacturers directly together or moving into mechanical plant or moving into different areas looking at um new technology you know how is mechanical plant rental going to be disrupted by blockchain how is the how are these sort of things going to take place i think i've got a young enough team with the right ambition and hopefully in five ten years time enough financial backing because we don't really take money out of the company just churns in and if you can make five six seven eight nine ten million pounds profit a year and reinvest then i think that is as long as you've got the ambition and the talent you do then it can it can do it naturally um now that is obviously extremely naive to say one day this will be a billion dollar company because i think it will be but i think that ambition and that mindset has to be there otherwise what are you doing if you want to be a family lifestyle business and turn over 50 million pound a year and send your kids to a lovely school and buy a nice car that's that's great and that's really but that's not me i can't do that because i i just wouldn't it's not i'm not 50 is not bad but i've just not got an interest in it because it just wouldn't it wouldn't it wouldn't take the boxes i'm not so okay this could get a bit nerdy my when i was a kid i used to um i used to love this game some people know this called rome total war and basically what it was it was a campaign game and you basically had to build an empire you had to build cities you had to build armies and you slowly take over and it wasn't like you could sit down for 40 minutes i'd play for like eight hours but i'm like that in life i love empire building okay so i love growing i love building things i love developing things i'm not like oh yeah we just made a hundred grand okay well that's great but us selling a brand new product and exploring a whole new product range more exciting than that sale because that sales just moving stuff around this is like whoa hang on what have we done here this is interesting for me so i think that that empire building or that mindset of wanting to create something that lasts and that goes on that's much bigger is why we will is why the billions a target and i know that's just a number so it's not i want a billion i don't actually want a billion i want to scale to the size where other people in the industry look and go they're the boys they're the ones they did it i love it you know george your your enthusiasm your excitement is tangible it's just absolutely knockout but your belief is is pretty in a really nice way but i love the belief and i think that is such an important hallmark of successful entrepreneurs having the vision but just knowing that yeah you're going to get there and that's what excites me so much about your story here i can see it you just have to worry you just have to be careful of the echo chamber because when you start to have some success you start to think that everything's given or that you're impenetrable and so that's something we just have to be to be wary of but yeah i think having that ambition and having that drive and having that focus is is key what is the the greatest learning that you've learned if you could take if you think from 2016 today that you would impart to someone who's probably not on the same yeah at the same level of growth right now but they're thinking okay i like this guy what is it what's the one big nugget they could give me play the cards you doubt i'd say so what i did when i first started to be an entrepreneur is i looked at what was fashionable or what was cool so let's build an app or let's get into climate change or let's get into fast fashion or let's let's do something that everyone else wants to do but i worked on a trading floor so i was used to fast pace buying selling putting deals together linking people together my dad's still stockholder from the black country so i understand steel manufacturing how to work with people in that sort of that remit what made britain great yeah and then i had tried to set up an app so i understood tech to a degree so if you put safe fence together originally it was an e-commerce arm which distributed black country manufactured products and we bought and celebrated with a chain between the two all i did was look at what's my skill set and where am i lucky enough to be in a position of i'm lucky to come from this background this is what i understand yeah so this is what i'll do and i think sometimes people chase things that are more difficult and i'm only talking from entrepreneurs in my sense obviously there's visionary entrepreneurs which i wouldn't count myself as so if you look at elon musk a whole different league right but if you want to be an entrepreneur that builds a business and does it in a for me a sustainable organic way i would advise people and try to de-risk it do something organic do something in your sphere do something you know do something you're exposed to um would probably be my one negative advice well george you've definitely made safe fence sounds super sexy i've got to give you that thank you defenses you are doing an amazing job we will do a christmas calendar if anybody is interested in the christmas calendar that'll be me next time next to some barriers i'll keep my top one but listen you have been absolutely a whirlwind of energy i've absolutely loved it thank you thank you so much for coming and very best of luck with say fans i cannot wait to see where this business is going to go thank you very much for having me