I worked with my old man starting up and it was the toughest 4 years. We were doing void alarms and screening for councils and our aim when the money came in was to move onto residential, commercial CCTV and alarms
Luckily it all worked out but thinking back the hard graft we had to do it was brutal and the out of hrs callout would be 4 or 5 times a night and more at the weekends with the little scroats and junkies breaking into the voids.
The Bradford riots were a real treat to be involved in with alarms going of everywhere in the Manningham estate and we just had to give up and return to the destruction the next day.
Ireland was also a nasty place where the estates ruled what went on and the Shankhill Road was a nightmare so you never went there after 3pm.
SSAIB approval came along and we have never turned back.
Now we have 9 staff and everything has settled down. The void property work was given up and we have contracts in place for the next 5 years.
Now that my old man is semi retired, a lot of the responsibility has been put on myself and it is good but it is hard to seperate work from family life.
I also made a lot of sacrifices to build up the company with my dad and didnt see my family as i was down south which i regret in a way but it has been worth it in the end.
I hope to give it all for the next 15 years and sell up, get out of this shithole of a country and do something abroad hopefully in Gran Canaria lol!
You never know what is round the corner though.