As an entrepreneur, I am hard-wired to have a positive outlook on life and business whenever possible. At Pimlico Plumbers, I believe things will start to look up by the end of this year and we will be in a much stronger position.
I sincerely think there will be a change of government at the next election – and this will bring a new air of confidence to the country. And it will be a government that will want to work with business rather than against it.
To demonstrate my belief, I feel the time is right to expand my business and grab more of the London market share by recruiting top-quality engineers.
During the next 12 months, I’m going to grow my 165-strong workforce by 25 per cent.
We’ve been much busier in the past few months and are currently completing 1,800 to 2,000 jobs a week, many of which are from the wider London area. I don’t believe the recession is over – but we need to move forward and, like all good entrepreneurs, I’m taking bold steps to make it happen.
At the same time I decided to create new jobs in my business, I heard about a report which said that workers in London are more downbeat than northerners about their job prospects and fear being made redundant. The survey showed that workers in the south-east would consider re-training for a new career, which apparently suggests a high level of job dissatisfaction. These surveys make me laugh. Surely the results just indicate that those in the south-east would put a lot of effort into finding a new job if they had to. If that means re-training, so be it.
No-one can afford to rest on their laurels in this economy. I would rather think that this survey demonstrates the flexibility of southerners in their career decisions.
Charlie Mullins launched Pimlico Plumbers in 1979 with just a bag of tools and a very old van bought at auction. It now has over 133 professional plumbers and a support team of around 35 staff, with a turnover of more than £15m.
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