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This week on the Trade Legends Podcast, Toni from ALO Electrical has spent over 15 years building a fire and security business from the ground up, and in this episode, he holds nothing back. Toni left school without grades, enrolled on a BTEC business course, bought a motorbike the same day and never went back.
He ended up becoming a chef before retraining as an electrician in his 20s, inspired by a family member in the trade. His first job interview involved being handed a plug and told to wire it on the spot, and that moment stuck with him. He went self-employed in 2009, founded ALO Electrical, and has been building it ever since.
But it hasn't always been smooth. Toni opens up about a large-door entry and auction system job at a stately home — £14-15k of work — that didn't pay for 9 months. Lying awake at night, wondering where the money was coming from. And how that experience made a 50% deposit on every job completely non-negotiable from that point forward.Toni also get's into the real challenges of taking on apprentices as a smaller firm, what colleges are getting badly wrong about preparing young people for the trades, and the hidden electrical dangers Toni regularly finds on site that builders have left behind, including a fire alarm system in an HMO that had been relocated, cabled chopped off, and left dead in the wall with tenants still living there.
We round off with a conversation about the financial burden on self-employed people right now, and why understanding your own numbers is the single most important thing you can do as a trades business owner.
