Jordan Woods is on course to make his first million with his property maintenance firm, after being made redundant from his previous job.
Jordan started as a Plumbing Apprentice at the age of 14, since regular schooling hadn’t worked out for him. He worked his way up to Operations Manager for a large maintenance and FM business. In 2011 he was made redundant by the firm, along with many others.
Enterprising Jordan borrowed a few hundred pounds from his stepfather and bought a van and insurance. Eager to put his Plumbing and Heating qualifications to use, he listed his services on a free trades directory in the hope of gaining paid work. Jordan was ecstatic to receive his first call from a home in Harrogate where a leak was causing havoc. After putting fuel in his van and paying for parts to do the job, he came away with £13 profit, which he spent buying fish and chips and baby food for his family.
In the weeks that followed, the phone didn’t stop ringing and Jordan started to generate strong referral business. The real breakthrough came when he gained a small contract with a Leeds based property management firm.
Jordan said “The reality was, I was just a one-man band going from job to job to make ends meet. But I dared to dream and had big ambitions for my family. People told me I was just a dreamer and to ‘get real’. At that point I put together a simple business plan for what I wanted to achieve over the next five years. Today it sits in a frame inside my kitchen as a reminder of those tough beginnings.”
With a growing business, Jordan worked around the clock and was able to take on another engineer and an administrator, working out of a small unit in Leeds.
Serendipity meant that Jordan crossed paths with well-known Leeds based Entrepreneur Martin Port, who had recently founded his new tech business ‘BigChange’. Jordan’s company became one of the first users of Martin’s new JobWatch platform, an all-in-one management system for any business with a mobile workforce. The technology is designed to make it easy for companies to plan, manage, schedule and track their operations and the system was just the growth accelerator that Jordan was looking for.
Starting with three mobile workers in 2011, Woods Building Maintenance now manages a team of 18 engineers on the system that manages the entire Woods business. According to Jordan, the technology has been a revolution for his operation, he said “We’re about to hit a very special milestone this year; we’re on track to reach revenue of £1 million by the end of 2017. When I look back at where I’ve come from, it’s a very special feeling. The BigChange system has enabled us to grow very rapidly between 30 to 40% every year.”
BigChange has gone on to become one of the fastest growing Technology Businesses in the UK and was ranked 12 out of 100 in the Tech North 100 that profiles the fastest growing tech businesses in the North of the UK. Martin has also gone on to be a mentor to Jordan Woods.
