In the press

FT.com - December 2007

It's not easy getting women to do all the plumb jobs

By Jonathan Moules

You can get away with all sorts of things when you are the boss. For Kerrie Keeling, founder of the largely female building business, A Woman's Touch, this means bringing her white Highland terrier Reuben to her Wimbledon office.

Other people who put in the long hours Keeling does, including trips to her foreign outpost in southern Spain, would probably get someone else to look after the pet. But delegation has never been Keeling's strong point.

"One of the biggest things about growing is letting go of control," says the 33-year-old, whose company will this year turn over £1m, four years after it was created. "I always wait too long before getting help."

Keeling quit a promising career at Citigroup to start A Woman's Touch, having achieved her personal goal of promotion to one of the bank's vice-president positions.

A couple of years later, however, and in spite of picking up a list of lucrative clients, including Gordon Ramsey, Keeling was still driving the van and doing the quality control on every piece of work.

The strains left her feeling "absolute exhaustion", she recalls. But she pulled herself back from the brink when she found herself pining for her old salaried banking job.

"I kept a diary of everything that needed to be done and discovered that less than 10 per cent needed to be done by me," she says.

Keeling's first move was to appoint a PA. "She changed my life," Keeling says. The office now has eight administrative staff, and farms out work to a pool of about 50 tradespeople.

Finding good employees in an industry dominated by men is hard, Keeling admits. "It is much harder than finding clients."

One particularly useful source has been Women and Manual Trades, a national organisation funded by the London Development Agency and the European Social Fund, among others.

In spite of this, A Woman's Touch has had to put a few men on its books to fill the skills gaps.

Keeling is toying with the idea of creating a specialist training college for her needs, although such a venture would need considerable outside funding.

Existing training programmes tend to spread an NVQ course over a year by holding classes only one or two days a week, which Keeling believes makes retraining too much of a commitment.

She would rather run intensive full-time courses, which can be completed in a matter of weeks.

Funding is the biggest barrier, according to Keeling. "I have looked at grants. There are one or two around, but they are very hard to track down," she says.

Merton, Keeling's local council, will pay for the training of a female plumber, but only release the money after the person has achieved the qualification.

Bigger pots of money are available from organisations such as the London Development Agency, the Olympic Delivery Authority and Everywoman, the female business support group. However, the application process for these groups can be quite bureaucratic, Keeling says.

"The more people you go through, the more strings get attached," she says.

"It does seem crazy [given] that one of the government's aims is to get more women in construction and more women into business."

The training college idea also takes second place to Keeling's need to expand her business.

A Woman's Touch started life in Keeling's Docklands flat, picking up jobs from her former Citigroup colleagues and clients.

But the business soon expanded into Brighton, primarily to serve the large local gay market, which Keeling has found prefers the services of female tradespeople.

The other main customer group for A Woman's Touch is men who are too embarrassed to phone a plumber just to change a washer, Keeling adds.

Expansion has been possible in part because Keeling delegates control to someone locally. She now has Cambridge and the Midlands in her sights, but also talks about opening in Australia, New Zealand and the US.

"I am going where I have people and where there is a need rather than just picking a location," she says.

A Woman's Touch has been approached about franchises, and although Keeling admits she has "flirted" with the idea, she says she would prefer to grow the business herself.

"We are still very small and to me it is still a lot if control to give away. I want to do that with someone I know rather than risk it."

Keeling admits that she is biting her nails about the Cambridge move, but she has gained some reassurance by involving her brother in the process. He also followed a career in investment banking, but, unlike his sister, continues in a salaried role.

For the past few years, however, he has also acted as a mentor to his entrepreneur sister. Each week she gives him a lift to his office, during which time they discuss pressing issues in her business. "I am very lucky because he does tell me the truth," says Keeling, adding that outside experts are often hard to come by for small start-up owners such as herself.

Keeling's brother is also the only other shareholder in the business, after she gave him a 10 per cent stake, although she adds that his two hours of advice each week is not enough to earn him a dividend yet.

One thing Keeling has needed little help on is finance. To date, she has funded the business herself, and switched banks in order to get herself a better deal and a personal banker.

A £15,000 overdraft has also proved important. The key is to ask for it when you are in credit, Keeling notes.

Her biggest headache is getting clients to pay on time, which has a direct effect on cashflow. Keeling insists on a 50 per cent deposit, which is high for the industry, but she has also had to threaten court action to receive payment.

Although A Woman's Touch does some commercial work, Keeling says she has stuck largely to the residential market, in part because of the lower risk of payment delays.

"Some of the bigger companies tend to be all-powerful when it comes to payment and we would have even bigger sums outstanding," she says.

Ironically, given Keeling's self-confessed reluctance to delegate, she says that owning her own business is not her prime motivator.

"Being able to seize opportunities is the most important thing," she says. "I could work for someone else if they would let me do that."