My brother-in-law said something nice!
I can’t quite believe it, but I've been doing bits 'n' bobs for my brother-in-law’s plumbing and heating business for nearly 20 years.
It started with me typing his quotes.
My husband (his twin) and I popped round one evening and Sean was typing up quotes at his desk. Well, I say typing, it was more like 2-digit-jabbing.
I couldn’t believe how painful it was to watch him type, the time it was taking him, he’d be there all night!
I offered to help and he’d be doing me a favour.
I’d just had Millie and was missing adult company, my busy ad agency job and doing something I was good at (and in control of!).
There’s no manual or course to prepare you for the first steps of mum-dom. It was a shock.
Helping Sean was perfect, his office was in his house around the corner, so it was near, I had a reason to get dressed in the morning, I’d see other adults, claw back a bit of sanity and feel useful while Millie slept in her car seat behind me.
A few weeks in, I suggested Sean got a dictaphone (it was 20 years ago) that way he could dictate the quotes at the end of a long day spec’ing up jobs and I could type them up the following evening. No more laborious 2-digit typing. He got some time back.
Then we talked about him taking on a secretary/bookkeeper. I wrote the ad, we waded through the applications, interviewed the most promising and found the fantabulous Denise. (She’s still with him today!)
She took over typing, bookkeeping and revolutionised Sean’s office set-up. He ended up moving the office out of the house, initially converting the back of the garage, and a few years on renting a unit in town; for his quadrupled office team.
Meanwhile I wrote any ads, leaflets or press releases he needed, working with Martin Blunt from Recognition Creative on creative and design - we’d worked together at Lawton’s years before.
Together we developed the page plan for Sean’s website, I briefed, he designed, I wrote and he developed the Aqua Plumbing website.
4 times as the business developed and changed.
I’ve always advised Sean on marketing; written blogs, cases studies, storyboarded, scripted and coordinated his promotional video (with Rowan from Southpoint Films), suggested we collaborate with Kate Porteous, a social media manager and local photographer Carrie Bugg who shot (not dead!) the team over the years and came with me to capture some of their more decadent bathroom installations.
I even wrote his Operations Manual. That took 6 months of interviewing, analysing procedure and writing.
20 years on and 30 years after Sean first set out with his tool box in his little blue plumbing van, his business has grown into one of the most impressive, reliable and respected plumbing & heating businesses. Impressive enough to catch the eye of Homeserve Plc, a British multinational.
At the end of this year Sean hands over the reigns to Homeserve’s very own Dave, and I look forward to seeing what comes next as I continue to write blogs and case studies for them.
In the meantime though, I’m revelling in the lovely email I got from Sean this morning, “Thank you for all your amazing work and advice you have given me over the many years.”
They say never work with children or animals; but in-laws?
In my opinion; yes, do it!
It’s a lovely thing to be able to help, as long as it doesn’t spill over into Friday night dinner!