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.
There was endless target-setting, and dashboards built to impress senior leadership rather than help anyone actually doing the work. Performance theatre often seemed to matter 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 on cloud infrastructure, automation, and 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 were getting lost, follow-ups never happened, annual service reminders never went out, quotes were forgotten about and invoices 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 of building cloud infrastructure and automation that take complicated, repetitive work off people's plates. 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.
If you want to see whether it helps yours, TradeTrackHQ is free to try for 14 days.
