We couldn’t resist the chance to grill him on his experiences of working at SD and the changes he’s seen over the past three decades.
How did you begin your career with SD?
When I started, the company was a much smaller entity and I joined up as a trainee sealant applicator in Bristol. There were only around 12 applicators at the time, and of course now we have 95 applicators so it’s changed a lot!
Was it long before you started to develop within the company?
Not long at all – after five years at Bristol, I moved on to work in the Cotswolds and after a brief spell came back to Bristol as a Contracts Manager. It wasn’t long after that when I returned to the Cotswolds once more to run the entire region. Because the business was so successful even back then, there were a lot of opportunities to develop and thankfully I think that’s something which is as true today as it was then.
What made you want to take on sales?
I worked on the production side of things for the majority of my time with SD, and it wasn’t until around three years ago that I started running the sales side of things from our head office in Chepstow. Although I’ve always loved what I was doing, it felt like a good move for me to try something new and I was lucky enough to have been in a business where I could explore different roles.
What’s an average day like for you now?
I currently manage nine Sale staff members, and because I’ve been here for so long I tend to have a lot of people coming to me if there’s a problem so I do a lot of fire fighting! I’m in the office twice a week and then spend three days pricing up jobs and surveying projects, but it’s a really varied role which is why I love it as no two days are the same.
And what has been your proudest moment at SD?
My proudest moment has to be appearing on Challenge Anneka in 1994, when we helped a group in Burnham-on-Sea to build a lifeboat house in 72 hours. The show ended up being a lot of fun and I made some very dashing appearances sporting a floppy perm and an earring.
But there have been lots of proud moments throughout; we have a great team and the figures go up month on month so it’s a really good place to be.
If you’d like to hear more about career opportunities with SD teams, visit our vacancies page.
