I spent ten years working in government and the corporate world. Long enough to understand how big institutions operate, and long enough to grow frustrated with the culture that runs through them.
The endless target-setting. The dashboards built to impress senior leadership rather than help anyone actually doing the work. The sense that performance theatre mattered more than genuine results. I saw it clearly because of where I came from.
Hull to London
I grew up in Hull — working class, proper northern. Most people I knew worked with their hands. Plumbers, joiners, electricians, builders. People who graft, who take pride in doing a job right.
I moved to London and built a career in tech, becoming a DevOps engineer working in the cutting-edge side of the industry — cloud infrastructure, automation, CI/CD pipelines, the kind of systems that power modern software at scale. The work itself I loved. The corporate layer that sat on top of it, less so.
What I Kept Noticing
Throughout all of it, I kept thinking about the tradesmen I knew — family and close friends who run their own businesses. Brilliant at what they do, completely sorted on the tools side, but struggling with the business side of things.
Jobs getting lost. No system for follow-ups. Annual service reminders that never went out. Quotes that were forgotten about. Invoices that weren't chased. One mate told me he'd probably lost thousands over the years just from jobs he'd said he'd get back to and never did — not out of laziness, just because there was nothing in place to remind him.
These aren't people who lack drive. They're just running their business on memory and goodwill, which only stretches so far.
Building Something That Actually Helps
I had the technical skills to fix it. Years working with cutting-edge cloud technology, building systems that automate and simplify complex workflows. And I had a genuine, personal understanding of what tradespeople actually need — not from a pitch deck, but from sitting around the table with them.
TradeTrackHQ came out of that. A proper job tracker built specifically for UK tradespeople. No jobs slipping through the cracks. Reminders that go out automatically. Quotes and invoices in one place. The kind of simple, reliable system that was always available to big companies but never built properly for the sole trader or small team running three vans.
You're brilliant at your trade. You shouldn't also have to be a systems administrator to run your business.
That's what I built this for.
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