The Press and Journal (Inverness, Highlands, and Islands)
Getting laid off spurred Lachlan’s ambition
Hot on the heels of netting one of his plumbing and heating firm’s biggest contracts, young Highland entrepreneur Lachlan McInnes tells Mark Lammey about the highs and lows which come with setting up your own business
As someone who has always been intrigued by young people who start their own business, it came as no surprise that a chat with Lachlan McInnes left me feeling impressed.
Mr McInnes appears to have his head screwed on as tight as some of the equipment his engineers instal on a daily basis.
Aged only 2 9 , Mr McInnes has managed to grow his own heating and plumbing business into one with 11 staff members, a renewables division, a new office and showroom, and revenues of £ 2million.
And Inverness- based McInnes Plumbing and Heating has achieved all of this growth in the space of five years and with next to no start-up funding.
He was always intent on being his own boss, even before he started his apprenticeship, but might have delayed taking the leap for a fewyears had circumstances not dictated otherwise.
Mr McInnes, the firm’s managing director, said: “When I was 24, I achieved my gas safe certificate, but I still had another 12 months to go before getting my full SVQ to be a fully qualified plumber and gas engineer.
“At that point I was made redundant. I decided then and there that I didn’t want anyone else paying my wages and I launched my own business.
“Within a year the Scottish and Northern Ireland Plumbing Employers Federation assessed me and I achieved my SVQ. I’ve never looked back.”
Somewhat unsurprisingly, Mr McInnes’s youth and the unwillingness of banks to lend following the recession put a block on his early attempts to get the business up and running.
His solution was to work feverishly and scrape together money doing a range of odd jobs, through which he was able to get referrals from other tradesmen.
He said: “My age was an issue, but not so much with attracting staffmembers. It was more with customers, they did not think I had the experience or knowledge.
“At first it was a big problem. I started off looking to make anything, even just £5 or £10 a day cleaning gutters and doing odd jobs andthe business has grown from there. Once it got going we tried to generate work ourselves. After one or two years we had a track record. Customers could see testimonials on our website and now we are much more well-known.”
Mr McInnes, whose younger brother, Fraser, is on the firm’s books as an engineer, is now aiming to win more contracts rather than waiting for work to come in.
Ambitious growth plans include raising turnover to £10million and expanding the workforce. By this time next year Mr McInnes wants to have about 20employees.
Expansion would be much easier if clients paid up on time and in full. Late payment is a serious issue in the UK, with small-to medium-sized enterprises owed in the region of £26.8billion, an average of £ 32,000 each, and Mr McInnes said the problem is getting worse, not better.
Mr McInnes, from Fort Augustus, said: “There are certain contractors I won’t do work for anymore. It takes so long for them to pay that it’s almost not worth doing the job. You lose the power of having the money in the bank.
“Now we try to take deposits to make sure our cash flow improves. That’s something I’ve planned over the last few years.”
In some cases, Mr McInnes’s company has been kept waiting a year by clients who try to settle their bills by paying in dribs and drabs.
Worse still, there are those who do not pay at all. Mr McInnes once spent £12,000 in legal fees in an attempt to claim an outstanding payment of £50,000, but in the end had to cut his losses and the client responsible is still trading.
Keen to avoid watching history repeat itself, Mr McInnes has now switched his focus to larger renewables and district heating projects which can make up half of the firm’s annual income in one fell swoop.
And the tactic he uses is quite fitting for someone with his background in business, get in there early.
The firm recently netted a lucrative contract to upgrade heating and insulation in Scottish houses in the grip of fuel poverty, a feat Mr McInnes puts down to the fact that he can cover all of the bases, gas, oil and renewables.
But Mr McInnes said he didn’t believe Scotland’s existing housing stock was in a state of crisis.
He said: “Modern houses are really up to standard and well insulated.
“This contract focuses on people struggling to pay bills or to change heating from old inefficient electrical or oil systems. These types of properties are generally older, and not well insulated.
“It’s just about older housing stock, that’s all it is. They were built in accordance with the regulations of the day and they just need to be brought forward.”
“I didn’t want anyone else paying my wages and launched my own business”