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INTERVIEW: The Apprentice winner Joseph Valente

Alex South

We caught up with Joseph Valente, winner of BBC’s The Apprentice in 2015, to ask him about how he got into the plumbing industry – and why others should follow suit.

His company ImpraGas received a £250,000 investment from Lord Sugar after Joseph won the show – but success was in the water long before he entered the TV show.

HIP: How did you get into plumbing?

Joseph Valente: I was expelled from school when I was 15. I was out and about, hanging around in the park and I realised I needed to create an opportunity or I’d end up down the wrong paths. I approached a 25-year-old plumber, he was one of the guys everyone looked up to. He had a BMW and was earning a lot in plumbing. I wanted to be like him and work for him. I said I’d work for him for a year for free. That’s exactly what I did and I entered into the plumbing world.

HIP: How many apprenticeships did you do?

JV: I had a record seven apprenticeships in my two years of training. It was down to a whole host of reasons that were not my doing – apart from one, which I was actually fired from. The other six went out of business or the boss wasn’t treating me right, a whole load of things that were an absolute nightmare. The lesson was if you want something hard enough, stick at it. No matter what, keep going. Apprenticeships are like gold dust, hard to get, hard to find. But with the right attitude you can easily find them. That was something I was able to do. My two years went by and I became a qualified plumber.

HIP: What did you do next?

JV: When I qualified, I asked my boss for a pay rise and he said no. I went from £35 a day, I wanted £60 and he was offering £50. I quit my job and I took out a £6,500 loan and went and studied on a private gas course. That for me was my elevation to the next level. Although I was not working, to spend money, take a step back and go from a potential £18,000 a year to £38,000 a year. That jump to gas qualification is vitally important, I think everyone should do it if they like that type of work. By the time I was 19 I was a qualified gas engineer earning £38,000, which was awesome. I then worked for two years as a gas engineer servicing, maintaining and installing boilers. I hit 22 and decided I wanted to start my own business after reading Lord Sugar’s book. Then ImpraGas was born.

HIP: How did being on, and winning, The Apprentice help you and your business?

JV: We were doing okay before, we had about £500,000 turnover by the time I reached the show – within two years. The show allowed me to turn around and invest in the business. The investment allowed me to develop a back-end infrastructure and pay all the wages and costs to build a solid foundation to expand the business. The exposure was unreal, that allowed me to make a lot of contacts within the industry – manufacturers, wholesaler accounts, to stand out from the crowd. I also got great mentorship on how to build a bigger business.

HIP: What makes ImpraGas different?

JV: I think for me it is focusing on that customer experience. Not every customer is happy but in this industry, the service industry, it’s very, very important to understand what the customer wants. It’s a people business, they are buying people, not necessarily buying the boiler. They can buy a boiler from a one-man band, British Gas, us, whoever. It’s that experience around buying that product. If it’s a distress purchases, it’s not because they fancy buying a boiler and they are happy. Most people see it as a cost. If it’s broken down they are usually angry, so it’s about making the experience as informative and detailed as possible.

HIP: What’s your favourite part of the job?

JV: Breakdowns. That’s something I used to love, getting into it, understanding it, developing my skills, learning which noise meant some other part was wrong. Knowing where to look. If you are a solid breakdown engineer, that’s when you’re a master of the craft. You’ve learned to install, learned to service – a true expert knows how to fix it when its broken. That’s a skill.

HIP: What advice would you give to people looking to get into the industry?

JV: The plumbing and heating trade can offer you a very rewarding, promising, wealthy career. There’s a whole host of different options when entering into this sector that can be the outcome. There’s lots of opportunities: working within a company, becoming an entrepreneur, from within a corporation, being a one-man band and having enough work for yourself, creating your own lifestyle or taking it to the moon and building something big on your own. It’s a fantastic industry to work in because there is so much opportunity – opening even more with smart controls, smart home and the renewable sector. That’s getting a lot more exciting and affordable. Youngsters have a lot of different options.

 

You can follow Joseph Valente on Twitter at twitter.com/mrjosephvalente.

For more information about ImpraGas, visit www.impragas.co.uk.

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