Declan Curran, 41, is from London, UK. He started his property maintenance business, HomeFix Direct, in 2009. HomeFix Direct is a one-stop shop for all property maintenance issues big and small, covering all of London and catering to everyone, from individual landlords to major estate agency chains and property companies.
Starting the Business
Q: Where did the idea for your business come from? Where were you in your life and career?
A: I’d seen my vision of expanding my property development career curtailed overnight with the arrival of the credit crunch, so I started buying and developing properties (as this was a credit-based industry) and instead consolidated and managed the rental properties I’d already accrued. But I found this deathly boring after around 6 month, so I decided instead to utilize the contacts and skills I’d gained during my property development career in order to set up a business providing services for other landlords and property companies.
From very humble beginnings, simply offering EPCs and safety certificates, we grew organically to the stage where we were being asked to quote for, and carry out, all manner of refurbishment, development and reactive maintenance works, which we continue to do today.
Q: What was the biggest challenge you faced when starting out?
A: The same challenges I face today – securing and keeping strong contractors, and maintaining positive cashflow in an industry where we often have to pay upfront for materials and labour, yet invoice on 30-days basis.
Q: What is the one thing you know now that you wish you knew when you started the business?
A: How many vultures and parasites there exist to thwart hard-working businesses by constantly attempting to extort money from them! Congestion charge penalties even though you’ve previously paid the tickets, parking attendants who swoop to issue tickets when your contractor has just popped in to buzz the door, banks that are happy to charge for everything but provide appalling service etc etc.
It’s all part and parcel of the entrepreneurial experience of course, but it’s actually shocking at times how frustrating it can get when you’re just trying to provide an excellent service to your clients and so many external factors pop up to put obstacles in your way. The number of times our contractors have been en route to suppliers to collect materials for an urgent job, and we’ve gone to pay them only to find that the online banking is ‘down for maintenance’, or some such nonsense, and we’ve had to apologise to clients that we’ll be delayed even though it’s 100% not been a problem of our making… That can get you down after a while, so to have been more aware before starting it up would have been helpful – I may not have found some days such hard going since!
Q: What would you consider your first big success in the business?
A: Probably winning Foxtons as a client. I’d courted them heavily in our first year, knowing that if I could persuade them of our skills and reliability we’d have hopefully won over a major industry player. Sure enough they became a valued and valuable client to us, and we still enjoy a great working relationship with them years later; having only previously been dealing with very small players (who were and are no less important I might add!) it was a lovely sign that we were on the right track to gain the trust of a massive company.
Q: What is the toughest thing about getting to the top / staying on top in your industry specifically?
A: The toughest thing about getting to the top in my industry? No idea – I haven’t got there yet! There are some players who have clearly achieved lots more than HomeFix Direct so far – but when I see them out and about and reflect on the fact that they have fleets of vans, teams of contractors, entire call centres and massive advertising budgets, I never get jealous – it merely spurs me on to keep growing the company to the stage where we’re on a level playing field with them.
Equally, I’m not sure what the toughest thing about staying on top of the industry might be, but whatever it is, I do hope our larger competitors have figured it out, because we’re coming for them!
The Future
Q: Where do you see your industry heading in the next 5 years?
A: I don’t see many changes particularly. Property maintenance isn’t like, say, the tech sector where rampant innovation and consolidation constantly changes the landscape. Nor is it cyclical in the same way that the property market is – whether house prices are rising or falling, reactive maintenance still has to be done. I see therefore the industry more or less reflecting where it is today, with a couple of giants, a handful of mid-sized firms, and a variety of smaller operators doing business here and there, all the way down to the myriad one-man-band operators out there.
The only difference really will be the emergence of HomeFix Direct as a significant force.
Q: What do you plan on doing / changing in order to keep growing in this time period?
A: I’m keen to develop the company’s focus away from 90% corporate clients to a nice 50 / 50 balance between B2B and ‘ordinary’ customers, i.e. homeowners and landlords keen to try a fresher approach to property maintenance. It’s hard to know how best to target such consumers though. Experiments with adverts in some major press haven’t yielded much response, which I found amazing really. Plus being written about by some huge national newspapers equally didn’t result in Mr and Mrs Jones calling us up the next day. I’m not keen to spend too much money simply testing out advertising options may ultimately yield nothing, yet equally the research has to be done if that sector is to be targeted correctly.
I’m also keen to explore monthly retainer-type deals, whereby homeowners and landlords pay a set fee in return for all kinds of maintenance cover. These types of offers are of course provided by the industry’s major players, and it’s an area I’d like to explore over the coming year or two. We already carry out this type of structure for a major portfolio landlord we work for, but there’s no reason, with our able team and high standards, that we couldn’t roll this service out to the world at large as well!
Q: What does ultimate success look like to you? How will you know when you’ve achieved it?
A: Impossible to achieve. Ultimate success, to me, is the realm of the likes of Howard Hughes, Aristotle Onassis, James Goldsmith etc. – people who could shape whole industries and rewrite the rules in their own image. People like that lived on a bigger stage than the rest of us; the best I, or most of the rest of us, can hope for (without sounding defeatist!) is to reach a stage where I can buy companies to bolt on to what we’re currently doing, diversify, add value to undervalued assets etc. That would be pretty amazing. And to do it all from somewhere stunning, like Avenue Foch in Paris would be rather excellent too!
Q: What do you think will be the biggest challenge facing entrepreneurs in the near future?
A: Perhaps rising interest rates (although the BoE seems to be trying to avoid that scenario at all costs!) could affect entrepreneurs, but I have a feeling that as we slowly emerge from the smoke and wreckage of the credit crunch things are going to develop in a pretty rosy direction for entrepreneurs for a while to come. Certainly some of the powers that be are making the right kinds of noises about recognizing the value of them, and even allowing for politicians’ propensity for spouting self-serving rubbish 23 hours a day, it’s not hard to imagine that the next 5 years might be less challenging than the last 5.
Q: What one piece of advice would you give to someone just starting out in your industry and wanting to make it to the top?
A: Don’t overload on advice, because ultimately it’ll only cloud your vision. Don’t rely on banks, because they truly don’t care about you or your business. Don’t neglect customer service, because how your customers feel about you is more important than just about anything else. Don’t be afraid to cull under par employees or clients, particularly those who don’t pay in a timely fashion and cause you cashflow issues. Do take risks, because you only live once. And do read the biographies of successful businesses and their creators, because they’ll inspire you to do better.