Succession: The daughter who turned dad's 40-year plant hire firm into a thriving business

Louise Crothers knew her dad was close to retirement and knew she could take his business to the next level – and make him proud in the process...

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Construction has been a way of life for Louise Crothers, having grown up with a dad who ran his own repair and hire business for the best part of 40 years. 

Louise has spent her entire professional career in the industry in some form and was an office manager in a construction firm in Belfast before she decided to approach her dad, Ronnie, with a proposition about his company, RL Services back in 2018. 

“My dad worked by himself for 40 years fixing forklifts and then he turned 65,” Louise explained. “My brother was kind of working in the business with him a few years ago but again, they were just working along. 

“I knew Daddy didn't really want to retire and he wanted the business to carry on, so I was working in a construction company, as an office manager, in Belfast and I said to my dad, ‘why don't I come in and I'll run the business’. He kind of thought, ‘oh, I couldn't afford you,’ were his exact words. And I thought, ‘no dad, it doesn’t work like that; I tell you what, give me three months, and if you don't see any difference, and if you can't afford me, then I'll leave, I'll sack myself’. 

“So, it was me and him at the start, my brother had left at this point. So it's just me and him tiddling about. And the first thing I did – my dad was 65 – was to employ a mechanic.”

“That was seven years ago. Now the company employs seven people. So seven years later, today, we have now seven employees. 

“Obviously, after the first month, my daddy could see a big change and then he just thought, ‘right, well you're going nowhere’. But we had to generate more income and we have done; it’s easily trebled in that time.”

The company had to branch out and offer a few more services. They now hire out a range of plant machinery. While RL Services is on a smaller scale than some of the bigger players, Louise has her own ambitions – and it started by at least trying to act like a big player. 

“I asked my daddy one day, ‘what do we not do here that all these other companies do? How can we be like them?’ I'm certainly not saying we are like them, but we're working towards it.”

While her dad reluctantly suggested offering up training – he wasn’t a fan of doing it himself - Louise was certainly more on board with the idea. 

“I says, ‘well, why don't I start it and he looked at me and he goes, ‘you want to be a forklift instructor?’ If it's going to generate money, I'll do whatever it takes.”

Louise, who is a part-qualified accountant, went and retrained – for two full weeks – as a forklift instructor. She helped reconstruct the yard into a training centre, which took the best part of a year. 

“We started off with the forklift training, then built it up to like reach trucks, telehandlers, the scissor lift, the booms, so everything that we hire out, we can train you how to drive them.”

The business grew as a result and that saw the return of her brother, who took over the training and gave Louise a chance to return to the office to focus on pushing the business further. 

Growth has been steady since. They now fix and sell parts – there’s an employee on board for that too. 

Louise was clear from day one – “I absolutely saw the potential in this business”. 

She said: “I love setting myself a challenge and I could see there was a challenge here to be done. Daddy was 65 then and he's now 72. I know my daddy wouldn't have been fit enough for it and I knew I had challenges to try and organise staff but I've always set myself a challenge. 

“I would have a goal that once I hit a certain turnover, then I can employ somebody, and then we'll set out a strategic plan for what I want them to do then, when we hit the next turnover, I can employ somebody else, and that's how I have been basing it as we grow. There's no way, it wouldn't be sensible to employ seven people at one time, still on the turnover that you were at the start, it just didn't make sense.”

“Once we had a surplus of money, I would see that was an opportunity to buy another machine without hurting the business.”

The business has self invested in improving the yard space and increasing the number of buildings. There has been tangible growth and Louise is delighted, especially following in her dad’s footsteps. 

“All I wanted to do was make my dad proud,” she beamed. “That was another goal, I wanted my daddy to enjoy his retirement and for me now to provide for him. He's done that all his years, providing for me. I just see that now he's retired, this is an opportunity for me to provide for him, it just seems only fair."

“But to be honest, at the very start, whenever it was just me and him and maybe one or two employees, I didn't want him to retire as such. What I wanted to do was be like a sponge and listen to everything he said. Obviously, being a woman in the construction industry is interesting; it's amazing the amount of people look at you and like, what do you know about a forklifts?

“At the time daddy kind of thought how's this gonna work? Again, he probably thought what does she know? Not knowing that I'm a strong, determined person that, if I set my sights on something, I will not let it go until I prove you wrong, plus wanting to make them proud at the same time. I think I’ve done that.”

While Louise can take a step back and look at the successes, she understands it doesn’t come without hard work and sacrifices. She may have the freedom to do what she wants a little more but it’s still not a 9-5. 

“Before I came here, my objective in life was to provide for my family, my children, that was the reason why I got out of bed in the mornings. Whereas now, my kids, they're both adults, now they're 18 and 21.

“So now, what gets me out of bed in the morning, and what keeps me going is, now I have seven mouths to feed, seven people to provide for, that's always my get up and go.”

And with that, is the need to keep the business going in the right direction – it’s not all plain sailing. Recruitment, she admits, has been a tough nut to crack. 

“Getting staff in certain areas to build the business is frustrating, especially when you want to grow. We ended up bringing on an apprentice to train him up in the role because there was nobody out there for the position.”

Another important aspect of any business is cashflow and managing it. 

“People’s bad management of their business affects our business,” admitted Louise, who thankfully lives and dies, figuratively speaking, by her love of spreadsheets. Everything is accounted for.

“I'm a bit of a geek when it comes to spreadsheets; I have all my direct debits on a spreadsheet so I know how much money I need for that month; I know then what turnover I need to do.

“There are a lot of people out there who don't know and understand the whole finance, but you don't need to, it comes down to a bit of common sense at the end of the day.”

Louise is a also a member of Women in Business network which has proven to be a great stimulus in building the business – and, if nothing else, providing some much-needed respite from her male-dominated world. 

“I have a husband and two sons, so when I go home, it's male, male, male. When I come into the office, I'm the only woman here, everybody else is male so I’m just constantly in that male dominated environment. 

“Whenever I went to the Women in Business, it was just like a breath of fresh air. You kind of just think it's just you until you listen to everybody else's problems and you're thinking, they're the same as me, I'm not different to anybody else, I am normal.”

Being part of that group has opened up many more doors for Louise and allowed her to complete several other programmes. It was on one of these programmes that she was introduced to a mentor, which has been a game-changer. 

“One thing I would definitely recommend is getting a mentor. Within the Women in Business programme, there was all different mentors that came in with different expertise, like finance, strategies, marketing, things like that. 

“So, I actually clicked with one person, and I got her in privately as well. It's great because they can come in, look at your business from the outside; they're outside looking in through the window, where we're inside looking out. 

“They can see what you're doing and what you're trying to do and they can throw out suggestions and strategies that maybe you haven't seen that you completely think, ‘oh, here I didn't think of that’. That was absolutely priceless for me.”

Louise is not one to buy into the working more to achieve more mentality – she did that when she didn’t work for herself. Early mornings trekking off to Belfast resulted in late evenings, trying to cram in dinner and homework before bedtime. 

Now, Louise works with a little more freedom. 

“When the boys need me, I am there and whenever I know that they're okay and they don't need anything, I can go into work, should it be 10 o'clock at night, I can go and do that.

“I was very fortunate that whenever my boys were younger, I had great grandparents that always looked after them and took them to school for me. I just dropped them off at 7am because I worked in Belfast, which was hard pill to swallow, and we weren't getting home until six o'clock at night. You're then sitting down trying to make dinner, do homework. That was difficult.”

But would she have been able to do what she does now back then? Probably not. 

“My dad always would say I wish I had you here 20 years ago but I think things happen for a reason. If I was here 20 years ago, it probably would still be the same because I think you need to be in other places to learn and then to come back. 

“I didn't know 20 years ago what I know today so I wouldn't have been able probably to push it along. You really need to be away working and sort of soaking up the ideas from other companies and what they're doing, and then bring it back and apply it to what you have.”

For everything else, there are podcasts. Louise listens to podcasts regularly for her own inspiration – “they’re a great motivator”. 

And her own words of wisdom on starting out in business: “It's not impossible, you just have to get the right idea, and as long as you're prepared to put the work in, definitely do it.”

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