EP #3 – Growing A Heating Business

Overview

In the third episode of the FieldRocket Podcast, we’re joined by Alexa Macarthur from blueglo. Alexa is a director at the company and has had great success over the years managing a team of 35 (and growing).

Tune in and learn more about the process of growing a business, whether that be keeping quality up to hiring new staff and managing customer expectations.

Listen to the episode:

Highlights

Alexa’s & blueglo’s background

• Background was quite varied, about 10 years fell into an admin job (0:58)
• In about 2019, blueglo was struggling – Alexa stepped in and merged as a director (2:20)
• The history of blueglo as a company (3:00)
• Diversifying the business into controls & more (4:50)
• How this plays with the direction of the industry and heading towards renewables (6:00)

The complexity of running a business

• There wasn’t a conscious decision to grow the brand, but more of a reaction to demand (8:20)
• On the topic of offering a range of different services, keeping everything inhouse rather than outsourcing (9:45)
• Staff are always going to be a challenge running a business – with scheduling, reputation, and management (13:45)
• Each of the four directors have distinct roles, and are set up in a way they can successfully run the business (16:24)
• blueglo haven’t changed pricing in quite a while as a concious decision to the cost of living crisis etc. (20:41)
• On hiring – if any decent person comes your way, you snap them up regardless, as long as you can (22:00)
• When looking to hire people, you also need to look at how they’ll fit into your company culture (23:42)

Maintaining quality

• Their admin staff are trained to communicate well and keep on top of all deliverables (18:20)
• There are problems at times, but you have to learn to deal with expectations – especially in winter times since they’re a heating business (19:43)
• Every department will have a certain person in mind for the job to offer the best quality, which plays a role in scheduling too (28:02)

Heat pumps

• Heat pumps are not necessarily suitable for all the different types of properties, despite the government push (11:22)