About
The Cloudfm Journey
Cloudfm was started in a garden shed with minimal capital. Learn how I transformed the business into a £70 million empire using innovation, resilience and grit.
Despite having little-to-no capital upon starting Cloudfm, I had learned a series of valuable lessons from my previous business Essex Air Conditioning.
I quickly found that the lessons I learned in failure were now providing me with insight that my competitors did not have. Energised by the idea that my previous failure could potentially be a secret superpower, I built Cloudfm to over £70 million in just four short years. I put this down to a revelation I had; instead of competing against my peers by emulating them, I should compete against them by doing the opposite.
Doing the opposite means going against the grain. Instead of taking certain traditional practices as established norms, I questioned them. Instead of following the work culture established by my competitors, I developed my own work culture based on empathy and respect, focusing on developing stronger ties with my workforce, and ensuring that they are valued above all else. Instead of investing in established tools and technology, I invested in creating our own innovative and game-changing technology.
The result was an industry-leading company; both in its use of technology and in its speed of development. Cloudfm became the UK’s fastest-growing facilities management company.
As I learned with EAC, complacency is a killer, and initial success does not guarantee continued success. When the pandemic hit, I knew I needed CloudFM to build resilience to get through this. I needed to equip my teams with the right work culture to get through this and not take my eye off the future because of a catastrophe in the present.
Despite suffering substantial setbacks at the start of the pandemic, the resilience I installed in Cloudfm ensured that we bounced back to even greater heights.
Now, after years of managing Cloudfm, doing the opposite is in my nature, and with my new podcast series, I’m connecting with other business disruptors to inspire those who need it to do the same.
