Steve Whitmarsh : Land Rover's youngest ever production manager on building engines, relationships, and a fleet management business.

Steve has a proven track record within the automotive industry in the UK.   

The youngest ever production manager with Land Rover – managing over 100 personnel at the age of 21, he made the jump from manufacturing to corporate sales for Rover Group in 1997 managing the leasing and independent rental sector in the North of the UK. 

In 2000, he made the move to Volvo Car UK Ltd as Southern Area Leasing and Rental Development Manager before a 2 year spell as National Sales Manager for an independent leasing company saw exponential growth with the business being ranked the 27thfastest growing company in the UK. 

Steve later moved to RAC heading up its Fleet & Commercial sector where he delivered a significant turnaround in profits and growth before founding Multifleet Vehicle Management in 2011 which trades as runyourfleet. 

Runyourfleet is now a multi award-winning company managing 30,000 vehicles across the UK on behalf of more than 1,200 businesses. It has its own unique customer platform developed in-house and is seeing significant growth across all services. 

In our conversation we talk about Steve's engineering apprenticeship at Rover Group his early success in the production environment and his transition to the commercial side of the business. He describes some very happy times along with some challenging times in a number of corporate roles with household name brands like Volvo and the RAC before sharing his story of another transition, this time into starting a fleet management company from scratch. Steve is a such a warm and friendly human being and I am delighted to be able to introduce him to you in this episode. I look forward to hearing what resonates with you. 

If you enjoy listening to my guests' career stories, please follow CAREER-VIEW MIRROR in your podcast app. 

You can contact Steve via LinkedIn

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This episode of Career-view Mirror is brought to you by Aquilae. 

Aquilae's mission is to enable Fullfilling Performance in the auto finance and mobility industry, internationally. Adopting our Fulfilling Performance Paradigm helps you identify what steps you need to take to enable Fulfilling Performance for yourself, your team and your business. Contact cvm@aquilae.co.uk for a no obligation conversation about your situation.

Email: cvm@aquilae.co.uk

Episode recorded on 22 June 2022

Transcript

Steve Whitmarsh: 0:00

They said, they've drafted me in as an apprentice and said, just go and work out whether that's the best solution. And I looked at it and said, I can tell you now that's not the best solution.

Andy: 0:12

Welcome to Career-view Mirror, the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry looking back over their careers so far, sharing insights to help you with your own journey. I'm your host, Andy follows. Ste ve Whitmarsh listeners. Steve has a proven track record within the automotive industry in the UK, the youngest ever Production Manager with Land Rover managing over 100 personnel at the age of 21. He made the jump from manufacturing to corporate sales for Rover Group in 1997. Managing the leasing and independent rental sector in the north of the UK in 2000. He made the move to Volvo car UK a southern area leasing and rental development manager before a two year spell as national sales manager for an independent leasing company saw exponential growth with the business being ranked the 27th fastest growing company in the UK. Steve later moved to RAC heading up its fleet and commercial sector where he delivered a significant turnaround in profits and growth. before founding multi fleet vehicle management in 2011, which trades has Run Your Fleet. Run Your Fleet is now a multi award winning company managing 30,000 vehicles across the UK on behalf of more than 1200 businesses. It has its own unique customer platform developed in house and is seeing significant growth across all services. In our conversation we talk about Steve's engineering apprenticeship at Rover Group his early success in the production environment and his transition to the commercial side of the business. He describes some very happy times along with some challenging times in a number of corporate roles with household name brands like Volvo and the RAC before sharing his story of another transition, this time into starting a fleet management company from scratch. Steve is such a warm and friendly human being and I'm delighted to be able to introduce him to you in this episode, I look forward to hearing what resonates with you. If you enjoy listening to my guests career stories, please follow Career-view Mirror in your podcast app.

Aquilae Academy: 2:35

This episode of Career-view Mirror is brought to you by the Aquilae Academy. At the Academy we turn individual development into a team sport. We bring together small groups of leaders from non competing organisations to form their very own academy team. We build strong connections between team members and create a great environment for sharing and learning. We introduce the teams or content that can help them tackle their current challenges. And we hold them accountable to take the actions that they decide about priorities. We say we hold our team members feet to the fire of their best intentions. We do this internationally with teams across the world. If you'd like to learn more about the academy, go to www.aquilae.co.uk

Andy: 3:20

Hello, Steve and welcome and where are you coming to us from today?

Steve Whitmarsh: 3:25

Hi, Andy. I'm coming to you from Henley in Arden which is between Birmingham and Stratford upon Avon in the UK and Stratford upon Avon of course being home to Shakespeare. So, yes, it's a lovely, lovely village. I believe it's the longest mediaeval High Street in the UK.

Andy: 3:43

Beautiful part of the UK. And thank you for joining us and welcome again. And as I do with all my guests, I want to go straight back to the day you were born. Where were you born and where did you grow up?

Steve Whitmarsh: 3:54

I was born in Leamington Spa. So fairly close to here Leamington Spa in the UK and started off in Warwick and then Hampton Magna, which is just down the road from where we are here in Henley in Arden. And then my father's job took us north to Tadcaster in Yorkshire, so at the age of two I went to went to Tadcaster, which is a good brewery town well known for John Smith's brewery. Yes, we used to back onto the brewery, not that that that's affected me at all in my life I can assure you my father was working for what later became Renault Trucks. It was Saviem which was part of Renault and it was the early stages of Renault coming into the UK market. He was head of technical for them and his role when they bought Burley A T rucks took him to Manchester, so we moved to Lostock Graylan which is near Northwich in Cheshire. And then it became part of Renault UK. So my father's role moved down to London. So we moved to Marlow on Thames for a few years. And then Renault bought the remnants of the Roots Group, which was Dodge Trucks based in Dunstable. And so his role moved to Dunstable. in Bedfordshire, so we moved across to Ampthill in Bedfordshire. And then we ended up back in the Midlands because the technical department of Renault Trucks moved back to the Midlands, Elmdon near Birmingham Airport not far from where you and I used to work together at International House. And we moved to Knoll in Solihull. And I've stayed around the Midlands ever since then. So done a bit of a round robin around the UK.

Andy: 5:46

And what sort of age were you when you got back to Knoll?

Steve Whitmarsh: 5:49

14

Andy: 5:50

Right. So all that between two and 14 which I'm sure is going to be interesting in terms of your education and things. But before we go there, what I'm noticing straightaway is you're born in Warwick sure in the Midlands, or that sort of area where which is a bit of an automotive Heartland in the UK. Anyway, a lot of talent concentrated around that part of the country, automotive talent, and then also a father who's in the industry. So you've got exposure at an early age there.

Steve Whitmarsh: 6:21

Yes. My father was an apprentice with Morris Commercial Cars. Alt hough he grew up in Forest Row on the South Coast. He moved up to the Midlands to do his apprenticeship with his twin brother, identical twin brother. And they used to apparently when they were on different placements, if one preferred a placement to the other, they'd swap over and no one would know. And they were both at school actually with the son of Hans Peter Porsche, who later became the chairman of Porsche, who was doing a an apprenticeship with Porsche at the same time as my dad and his brother were doing an apprenticeship at Morris commercial cars, and they did an exchange with Porsche. At the time. I think it was my dad's brother went over to Germany for I think he got the better deal than Porsche coming over to Morris commercial cars. And then dad stayed in BMC, British Motor Corporation for a while then after got married, and children arrived, needed to chase a bit more money. And it was, at the time when there was a lot of strikes going on in British Leyland, in the early 70s, wasn't a great place to be and saw an opportunity to go into a field based role for an importer of commercial vehicles. And hence went to Saviem or the importer of Saviem and I forget the name of the importer.

Andy: 7:46

So obviously a lot of automotive heritage in the family. We'll come back to that. Let's talk a little bit if we can, about what that meant for you going to school then if you were moving around so much what sort of a student were you? What memories do you have of your school days,

Steve Whitmarsh: 8:02

I can remember. By the time I was 14, I went to eight different eight or nine different schools I forget now. And every two to four years we'd be moving house. And I've made lots of friends. I'm still friends with lots of people around the country that I met, even in my primary school days, stayed in touch with people. But it made me very sociable, because I had to be sociable, to go to a new school, you have a big target on your back first of all, and you have to befriend people and, and win people over so that that's possibly the biggest influence the moving house has handed me as it made me much more gregarious and much more sociable. I think then, had I stayed in one place.

Andy: 8:46

So you can walk into a room full of strangers now and how would you feel about that?

Steve Whitmarsh: 8:50

Fine, I wouldn't feel intimidated. I'd start talking to people they can either enjoy the conversation or not. I'll try to be as interesting as I can.

Andy: 9:02

Very good. So Were there particular subjects that you favoured

Steve Whitmarsh: 9:07

engineering of type subjects sciences, I enjoyed all my sciences. I took a GCSE ya ear early in science, DT, thoroughly enjoyed DT and I went into engineering after school.

Andy: 9:20

Okay, we'll talk about that in a second. Just before we do what did you see your mum doing? What was her role? And did you have brothers and sisters,

Steve Whitmarsh: 9:27

I've got a sister who I'm pretty close to she's she lives quite locally to me as well now, and my mum was working as a tax inspector when children came along. And my sister was adopted because my parents didn't think they could have children and she had to give up work immediately. My parents were offered the opportunity to adopt a newborn baby. So mom gave it work immediately as mothers tended to in the in the 70s and didn't work then all the way through She had a London School of Economics degree and was very intelligent and later on in life when we were both at school full time living in Amptill mum became a part time registrar births, marriages and deaths. And then when we moved house to the Midlands she continued that and became a deputy superintendent registrar and actually married a number of my friends which is quite interesting.

Andy: 10:24

I misunderstood that, she officiated. Yeah, this is getting racier than I expect.

Steve Whitmarsh: 10:39

But she also pioneered some training for the registry office and in recognition of that was invited to Queen's garden party at Buckingham Palace, which was rather nice.

Andy: 10:49

A nice little highlight.

Steve Whitmarsh: 10:50

Yeah, so and passed away when I was 24, which is 25. A year later. So it was quite nice that she squeezed that in before she left us,

Andy: 11:02

indeed. So thanks for telling us about that. Let's go back to leaving school, then you already knew you wanted to get into engineering. And where did that take you?

Steve Whitmarsh: 11:14

So I was quite fortunate when when we were in Amptill I was at a school called Redbourne Upper school It was between Amptill and Flitwick, at the time, it didn't have a great reputation. It wasn't a great school. And I perhaps didn't concentrate as well as I should have done in those days. Apart from science and DT, I was great at that. Science, DT and Maths were probably my strongest subjects. And we moved for the last two years of my GCSEs. And that was probably a good move. I ended up at Arden school in Knoll, which was one of the highest performing state schools in the country at the time. And I remember the first day, a teacher walking into the class and everyone stood up. Apart from me. I didn't do that again, because I was excluded from the lesson for the rest of the session. It was a very disciplined school in those days, and it was a bit of a shock to the system. But it was the best thing that ever happened to me because I got some really good GCSE results. We took a GCSE a year early, they encouraged that. And I fell in with a really good, really good bunch of friends who were quite studious, but also we had a lot of fun and it couldn't have been better for me really. So

Andy: 12:33

You had fun and you came out with some good qualifications .

Steve Whitmarsh: 12:37

Yes, I did So I was really pleased that but going towards the end of my time at school, I didn't fancy doing A levels at all. I wanted to do something a bit more vocational, particularly centred around engineering and looked at doing BTech OND in engineering or similar but the careers teacher at school, Miss Evans suggested that I looked at an apprenticeship technician apprenticeship with with some of the motor manufacturers in the area and of course you had Rover Group be at Rover Cars Land Rover at Solihull, Jaguar, as it was a separate business in those days in Castle Bromwich and LDV vans. And so I studiously sent off my application to all of the above and had interviews with a few of them and was offered a technician apprenticeship with Rover Cars at Drews Lane plant which was right in the centre of Birmingham Ward End who neighboured the common Lane LDV plant and the apprentices shared the training school in the first year.

Andy: 13:49

How old were you then Steve?

Steve Whitmarsh: 13:51

I was 16. It was a week before my 17th birthday, and straight in 1989, straight into the technician apprenticeship, and it was a shock in some ways. I've got a relatively despite living in the Midlands from the age 14, I've got a fairly southern accent, and I was living in the leafy suburbs of Solihull, and going to be an apprentice in the factory

Andy: 14:15

Because Solihull is quite posh, isn't it?

Steve Whitmarsh: 14:18

It's fairly well heeled. Yeah. And being the posh kid going into Ward End in Birmingham was quite interesting, but made some lifelong friends there and it was great fun. So

Andy: 14:30

so how did that work? Where are you studying then? As well as working? What what tell us a little bit about that

Steve Whitmarsh: 14:37

Yeah, so the apprenticeship. It was a fully indentured four year apprenticeship in those days. Your first year was in the training school in work in a workshop doing basic engineering skills, but you also went on day release to a local college. So we were studying for an ONC a BTech ONC, Ordinary National Certificate In the first two years, and the second two years, you would do a higher National Certificate. And then you could convert that to a higher National Diploma by staying on for an extra year. And the first year is in the training school, you do basic engineering skills. And then you do three monthly placements around the business. And that could take you literally anywhere you have a degree of choice about where you go, and what you look at and what you study. And it was the best thing ever for me. I saw the whole of the Rover Group pretty much from an engineering perspective, the only area I didn't see ironically, was sales and I ended up in sales eventually, but I just had a ball I loved every minute of it. It was great fun

Andy: 15:42

So it really suited you you didn't want to stay on and do A levels. You wanted to start doing something more practical. And that combination really suited you then and gave you great exposure across the whole of Rover engineering.

Steve Whitmarsh: 15:54

Yes, yeah. I can remember the first placement being after the first year training school session. My first placement was shadowing a production manager in the A block at Drew's Lane plant, which was a dreadful place. They machined the A Series cylinder block and the A Series transmission cases for the MINI in there and it was the machinery was from the 1950s. It was dusty, it was smelly. It was quite cutthroat there was a very unionised environment. But what a buzz, it was just great fun being there, and everyone worked together. It was a really nice environment to be in, in many ways, albeit also quite stretching in others, and I just had a buzz from it. And that was my first three months of placement. Second placement was three months in conformance engineering, which is troubleshooting and identifying problems in production and solving them or with warranty claims from the field. And then Drews Lane was bought by LDV vans, and we had a choice of transferring to Longbridge or Landrover in Solihull. And of course I lived in Solihull at the time, so made perfect sense for me to transfer to Landrover.

Andy: 17:09

And that was during your apprenticeship was it?

Steve Whitmarsh: 17:11

during my apprenticeship. Yes, so I was 18 months into my apprenticeship and transferred to Landrover to finish my apprenticeship. It's all part of the same group. So there was no major upheaval, different training school and Training Manager and management team. But it was a much broader space to carry out my apprenticeship because there's body and white paint shops, full assembly, plant and lines, transmission engineering, facility engineering, there was a whole host of placements that you could go on that we couldn't go on at Drews Lane

Andy: 17:45

no, so you had more range. There was everything being done at Solihull, at Landrover. And did you have any ideas then were you starting to work out what you wanted to do. You know what direction you wanted to go in?

Steve Whitmarsh: 17:58

Not really at that stage, I started to focus on engine design and development towards the latter part of my apprenticeship. I spent a period of time in V8 engine development. I then spent a bit of time the most enjoyable part was probably OEM sales, and OEM projects. There's two different placements but OEM sales was selling engines, gearboxes, axles, and components to other manufacturers of vehicles. So that include TVR, Morgan Janetta, Westfield, Disney Imagineering Would you believe?

Andy: 18:36

What did they want? What were they

Steve Whitmarsh: 18:38

wanted steering axles for rides in America. The driven driven steering axles, which of course we produced, so we sold a batch of driven steering Landrover axles to Disney

Andy: 18:52

To Mickey Mouse and his colleagues

Steve Whitmarsh: 18:55

To Mickey Mouse indeed. And then went from there to OEM projects, which was taking those sales channels and doing installation projects for those OEMs. So one week, you might be working on a on an installation into a TVR of our V8 engine, the Land Rover V8 engine. following week, it might be helping out with the TDI engine transplant into a truck or a taxi or something like that. And I worked on the MG RV8 projects. I don't know whether you remember the RV8

Andy: 19:28

I do. Tell us a little bit about it.

Steve Whitmarsh: 19:31

That was a short run of 2000 MGBs rebodied and re engineered that were produced in Cowley. I think Steve Schlemmer was the production manager for it or the the main manufacturing director for it at the time, and we were tasked with shortening the length of the engine by 15 millimetres so it fitted it and then doing the installation project and the prototype build because it had particular components to fit underneath the bonnet, things like a different plenum chamber, different oil, filler neck, things like that, which all sounds fairly basic, but they had to be designed and they had to be machined and I was able to use a lot of my skills that I'd gained in my earlier part of my apprenticeship. I did the programming for the CNC manufacturing on all the CNC machining tools to machine these components. The senior manager I was working for at the time in that department was a chap called Ian Pogson lovely chap, really good chap, but had to have an operation and went off long term sick for a couple of months, and there was a lot of pressure to get the project delivered. I actually delivered a large proportion of the project much, much larger proportion than I should have done being an apprentice. But I had to do all the machine programming had to do all the production method sheets, introduce it into manufacturing, do the pilot build in assembly and V8 engines manufacturing and get the get the engines prototype engines delivered down to Cowley to be installed into the initial batch of MG RV8's that came off the production line.

Andy: 21:11

So circumstances there meant that you got more responsibility and more exposure at an early age.

Steve Whitmarsh: 21:19

Absolutely. And that gave me an insight into engines manufacturing far more than I would have done just being in a normal placement in Landrover. And I thoroughly enjoyed that. Following that, I was asked to join the diesel engine development team as a placement for three months placement with a view to then continuing in diesel engine design. And we were at the concept design stage of the TV5 engine, it was project storm. It was literally the initial sketches of an engine on a whiteboard, which was then taken from that, and designed from the ground up in house with the assistance of a couple of consultancy businesses. And my responsibility was to ensure that the compression ratio tolerance was achieved. And I forget the exact percentage, but it was it was the compression ratios, I don't know 20 to one, and it had to be plus or minus 1%. And anything outside of that meant that we wouldn't meet the emission standards for the engine. And no one had produced an engine with such a tight compression ratio tolerance at that point in time. And it was the first fast diesel engine in the world to use electronic unit injectors, which was a type of injector unit that was produced by Lukas that was quite unique at the time. So it was quite critical to get this correct. And the initial design team had come up with a solution where I won't bore you with all the details. But you had to they were going to specifically machine the conrods to meet the tolerance stack up of all the components in the engine. And they said they drafted me in as an apprentice and said, Just go and work out whether that's the best solution. And I looked at it and said, I could tell you now that's not the best solution.

Andy: 23:13

So you knew enough already by then?

Steve Whitmarsh: 23:16

Yes. Yeah, it was all my I was a manufacturing engineer, in all but qualification. By that point. I was in the last six months of my HNC. And it was just a dreadful solution. There's no way you'd ever offset machine or conrod to meet an engine tolerance stack up. So I then set about reviewing all of the tolerances on almost every component in the engine, because to get the Fireface to piston height, tolerance stack up involves so many different components,

Andy: 23:48

right? So it's a cumulative, it's like the sum of all of these other tolerances.

Steve Whitmarsh: 23:53

Absolutely. So I had to review every single component in that engine that affected that Fireface height. And it's quite a big task, and I came up with a much better solution for them. We saved them about 4 million pounds on the production, installation of the engine. And working with other engineers, we came up with a very clever design of conrod and I don't take the credit for it, but I did have a hand in setting the tolerances for it. And it was a fracture split conrod people had made fracture split conrods before, but never for a diesel engine and never out of forged steel, conrod, and there's some relevance here. I'll come back to it later. But it was lovely to see that design concept at that stage so I solved a big problem for them. And they said, great, by the way, this is your box. So when you finish your apprenticeship, you're going to be a diesel engine designer. Well done. This is going to be your job now. Great, happy days. And then they rationalised some of the design teams with the powertrain design team at Longbridge they were working on the L series diesel engine we were working on the TD5 engine they merged the teams and out of the blue my box disappeared unfortunately. So I was then left applying for jobs around the factory despite thinking I had a role so I applied for jobs around the factory and actually ended up working in conformance engineering in engines manufacturing which was okay wasn't quite what I wanted

Andy: 25:25

so that's not so not design now but in actually further down the down the chain.

Steve Whitmarsh: 25:32

Yeah, in in dirty smelly machine shops manufacturing, and a bit disappointed I wasn't I didn't have designer in my title, everyone wants to work in design and but nevertheless, actually had quite a lot of fun and quite enjoyed it. Problem solving, lending my newfound manufacturing expertise to production environment and excelled did quite well. quite pleased with performance boy did okay, you know, and I was about nine months into working in central conformance engineering, and I was asked to go and help out in a production sale because one of the production managers had gone on long term sick. So I was asked to go in and help the Support Engineer, just do whatever you need to do to keep production running, and really deputise for the production manager. So drafted into an area with four machining production lines and approximately 220 people, and completely rudderless, because the production manager had gone off sick at the drop of a hat. And I was there really in an engineering capacity more than anything else, but ended up running the Production cell? At the age of 21. And it was quite an eye opener. It was quite an aggressive environment. But we muddled our way through it, worked really well with the team there had another two engineers working in the area, but they weren't qualified necessarily, they'd come up through the ranks. So they deferred to my better knowledge in some ways. And I ended up slotting into the production manager role.

Andy: 27:23

Right? So you had a couple of 100 people.

Steve Whitmarsh: 27:26

Yeah. And I didn't have the title. And I was there as a performance engineer, but just helping out. And it then turned out that this production manager wasn't going to come back. And that there were a couple of other production manager vacancies in the area. An internal vacancy notice went up do you remember those. It was on the wall of production manager. Well, I'm four months into doing this anyway, and I seem to reduce the scrap levels, improved production, reduced overtime levels, I'd be stupid not to apply. So I applied and had an interview and they interviewed me and they said look Steve, we know you're technically capable of this, but you're only 21. And you will get eaten alive. You're the youngest person in the whole of the factory. By quite some margin. We know you could do it, but it would just be senseless first to put you in that position. I understand. Fair enough, but at least you know, that's where I want to be and understand it will be a few more years before I get there. It's absolutely no problem at all. So I went back to the production area and carried on doing what I was doing. Three months later, I was there on a Friday afternoon. We were meant to finish it Friday, lunchtime. I was there Friday afternoon, doing the administration for the department and the function. And I had a phone call from the PA to the manufacturing director, Paulette her name was. Oh Steve. Thank goodness, you're still here. Chris wants to see you, a chap called Chris Smart. Right. Okay, no problem I'll pop up. I don't want to alarm you but the HR director's with him.

Andy: 29:02

That's really calmed my nerves Let me know when you want to alarm me.

Steve Whitmarsh: 29:12

Have no idea what they're doing in there. Okay. Anyway, I went up to Chris's office, and sat down and said, Look, you've applied for this position. Yes. And I fully understand it's going to be a few years before I really I I'm going to be up to that role. Well we've actually had a conversation internally and we'd like to offer you the role. And so I it was two months before my 22nd birthday, I became the youngest ever production manager in Landrovers history. Incredible, and they actually moved me to a different production area that needed some problem solving. So i i Then Two weeks later moved to a different production area within engines manufacturing three production lines, and actually really enjoyed it. We solved lots of problems and had a lot of fun. And about 18 months later, and this goes back to the design role that I had a new component was being installed into engine manufacturing. And it was a fracture, split cast iron conrod. And it was my little baby. And I ended up implementing the production line for the conrod that I helped design as an apprentice. It's fairytale stuff, it's fairy tale stuff. And I went over to Althing in Germany to review the machine tool that was unique to this conrod that produced this fracture split conrod, it took eight operations out of the production line, it reduced the workforce by 50%. On that production line, no one was made redundant, by the way. And we tripled production, all through the design of this conrod basically. And it was, it was great to see this conrod come to come to manufacturing, and not many people get excited about conrods, I have to tell you, but I did at the time. And it was lovely to see.

Andy: 31:13

Especially when you been part of it, conception if you like and then being taken away from it, having that box on the org chart disappears, and you're not going to be a designer anymore, but then you still get to be part of the life of that conrod it's, it's a children's storybook in the making

Steve Whitmarsh: 31:34

Absolutely.

Andy: 31:35

And I'm wondering, listening to you tell that whether, you know, because you were so young 22 Just coming up 22 and dropped into those environments, but I'm thinking, you know, ever since you were two years old, you'd been dropped into new environments every couple of years. And whether it was conscious or not, you would have been learning the skills of being okay parachuted into a new environment. Here I go make, you know, good connections with people. And how did you find getting respect given you were so young in that role, and it's a definitely male dominated alpha,

Steve Whitmarsh: 32:12

alpha male, very unionised environment. And yes, it was quite an interesting experience. First of all, because I'd been an apprentice, I was actually a union member, which is quite unique. Because I was I was a production manager, and I had a card. So the superintendent in the area knew me as a member of the Union, I had to resign my membership and join a different I didn't actually join a different membership. But the fact that I'd come up through the apprenticeship route, and was known to quite a lot of people in that environment helped me a lot. One thing you do get by being in an apprenticeship in a factory like that, for four years, you get to know an awful lot of people. My Network was amazing. My little book of phone numbers around the factory was just incredible. I could find literally anyone and solve the problem and get things done in tool rooms in jig, making rooms, engine development to ask for advice on how to what happens if something like this goes wrong on a crankshaft. When does it fail, I could go I could draw on all sorts of experiences. And I earned respect, I guess, by just working hard I put in the hours, if there was a problem at midnight, the area just to add to that the area was running 24/7. Right. Sorry, it wasn't 24/7, it was 3 shifts, but midweek, three shifts. And so I would be called upon, often middle of the night, for the problem, machines down, you're going to stop discovery production or something like that. All hell breaks loose at that point, you've just got to drop everything, you've got to get into the factory. And even if you can't help, the manufacturing director just wants to know that you're there. So I'd work hard, I worked hard, I was there to brief the night shift every week, I'd do a briefing with them, I'd be there to solve their problems for them. And it wasn't necessarily problems with production, sometimes problems has personal lives, problems with their families, problems with their shift patterns, and what can we do to be accommodating for them? So we'd help people out as much as we can be human to people in an environment that can be quite inhumane at times. And I could operate and set every single machine on the line. And I made it my mission on each line. So three lines, there wasn't an operation on the line that I couldn't operate and I couldn't set

Andy: 34:45

and you'd decided that was going to be part of how you'd go about doing this job. You would be able to operate.

Steve Whitmarsh: 34:52

Absolutely, yeah. Yep. And sometimes I had to you're short of staff you've had to break down sometimes you would just have to keep machines running through break times and lunchtimes and things like that just to build stock through to keep other parts of the line running, there would be some machines where you'd have two machines doing the same operation, but one would be down. So you'd have to run the other one through overtime and things like that, and sometimes I'd be the only person available to do that. I'd just jump on and get on with it and do it.

Andy: 35:21

Right. These all sound like behaviours that would earn you the respect of the men, if you like, and I'm guessing there

Steve Whitmarsh: 35:27

There were a handful. A handful. Yeah, um, weren't any women. and it certainly wasn't discouraged. Women in the environment, but women were very much more on the assembly lines, because they're very dexterous, with the hands, so small nuts and bolts and things like that. So there are a lot of women on the assembly lines, but less so in the machining environment and the machining environment. Wasn't the nicest of environments. It was quite smelly. There's subsoils swarf everywhere. We kept it as clean as we could. But one machine on the V8 crankshaft line was built in 1912 and was a roughing lathe for rifles or guns of some sorts in the First World War. And it's still in the factory and had been adapted to be a roughing lathe for crank shafts. Right. That's, that gives you a sense of the sorts of challenges that you could be faced with in that environment.

Andy: 36:22

Okay, and how long did you stay in that environment?

Steve Whitmarsh: 36:25

So I was a production manager for three years and enjoyed it. It was quite aggressive. It was quite tiring. It was quite stressful. There was a lot of stress and pressure, but was there for three years enjoyed it. And BMW had purchased Rover Group at that time from British Aerospace. And

Andy: 36:46

Did that happened during your apprenticeship then or during your role as manager,

Steve Whitmarsh: 36:49

it was just before I became a manager. So it was in my role as a conformance engineer. And it was fine. No problem at all. But they announced that they were going to be moving diesel engine production to Steier in Austria, and therefore, there would be petrol engine production but not diesel engine production. Well, my production area was diesel engine focused. And I just sensed that there was going to be some changes. Hams Hall was being built at the time for petrol engine production. And a chap called Chris Mark who had been very influential in me becoming a production manager was the plant director at Hams Hall and was building Hams Hall at the time, but there was no guarantee that I'd be able to get over to Hams Hall, or be drafted into there. I'm fairly sure I perhaps would have been because I was fairly well respected. But I just sensed that it was time for me to try something new. I'd progressed to production manager very quickly, but there was limited opportunity to then progress to the next level up area manager there was obviously far less area managers. I think it was Grade E it was called in those days and I saw another internal vacancy notice for northern area leasing and rental manager reporting to a chap called Jeff Payton Brawl, who you know, well. And I fancied the idea of

Andy: 38:16

that is such a big change.

Steve Whitmarsh: 38:18

Well just felt that it would be great to get out into the field and try my hand at sales. i The only sales experience I'd had was component sales, selling technical bits to Mickey Mouse and the like.

Andy: 38:34

Yeah, it was a business to business. You'd have that business to business sales background doing that.

Steve Whitmarsh: 38:39

Yes. So I found Jeff up. Said Jeff, I'm not a graduate. I did an apprenticeship. I've got a HNC and a HND. I don't really know an awful lot about sales, but think I'm fairly articulate and would get along quite well. He said well, I'm a ship's architect, and I'm not a graduate either.

Andy: 39:00

I can hear him saying wonderful voice that he has, such a fabulous voice. Yeah.

Steve Whitmarsh: 39:06

And at least you've had the balls to call me no one else has. If you put your application in, I'll guarantee you an interview. Okay. Great. Thank you very much. So I sent off my application and was invited for an interview at Longbridge with Jeff and a girl I forget her name now in personnel there. And it went quite well. quite enjoyed it. And then I had a phone call to say they want to do a second interview. Oh, well at least I'm through to second interview stage. And it's going to be at Studley Castle at seven o'clock in the evening in three weeks time. Okay, great. So well, I'm gonna have to do something a little bit different here. So I phoned Studley Castle, booked an overhead projector in the room and did a full, there was no projectors, it was acetates full acetate presentation with a handout on what I would do and what I would change about the role turned up at seven o'clock on the Thursday evening, and it was Steve Harris and Jeff Payton Brawl. Both wonderful people. And Steve said, Well, you're obviously gonna do a presentation because I didn't order that overhead projector, no one else has done a presentation. Don't make it too long because the bar shuts soon. And so I did a presentation and then I sat down, we had a good chat. And I got the job against all the odds having been in manufacturing. And Steve pointed out that I had more direct reports than he did wondered why on earth I wanted to move out of manufacturing. But just I had enough swarf in my turnups, it was time for a change.

Andy: 40:55

I had enough swarf in my turn ups. So just thinking what what was it about the alpha male environment of production that led you to believe you would be tough enough for the world of sales and Because you would be home based

Steve Whitmarsh: 41:11

marketing? And I got the job. Manufacturing tried to stop me leaving and said that I shouldn't go and they they offered me a promotion and all sorts of things. No, I really do want to go and try this. So fine. I got sent a different company car in addition to my my NVO car at the time, so I had suddenly had two cars didn't know what to do with them. Someone sent me a scrappy old desk from Longbridge to put in at home. A mobile phone arrived and a laptop and I was told to turn up at Jeff's house two days later Because I would be field based, very common now. But back in, I think this would have been 1997. Back in 97, it was quite rare to be home based, of course. And I turned up at Jeff's house and first thing he did just hand me. I'm sure it was Michael, his son, who was about three months old. Here, hold that for a minute, Steve, will be with you in a minute. And that was my introduction to leasing. And I didn't have a clue what I was doing. For the first three months it was what's a residual value? What's public sector, what's private sector, what are holding costs, I had no idea what was going on. And I was taking over a territory from David Stevens, who was the nicest, kindest man I think I've ever worked with. He was lovely. And he patiently took me through all of the accounts in the territory. What made up rentals what we could influence in terms of residual values, discounts, what our role should be, what was sensible about the role, what wasn't sensible about the role. He really, really trained me from the ground up in leasing. And I couldn't have asked for a better mentor, he was a lovely, lovely fellow. And, you know, David as well, of course, from those days, he moved into Rover Rental, and was rental manager for Rover. And I took over northern area, leasing and some small rental companies.

Andy: 43:37

And was there ever a sense of loss or having left behind all that engineering interest that you'd cultivated through school that had steered your choices of subjects to take and then the apprenticeship and finding you were very good at it being very good in the in the manufacturing environment? Did you ever think what am I doing, leaving that behind? Or? Were there no second thoughts?

Steve Whitmarsh: 44:03

I think I did have some second thoughts right up until we went on the launch of the Freelander. I know let's go and spend a week in a five star hotel in Marbella, hosting people and making sure they drink and enjoy themselves driving a Freelander around up the steps of the hotel off the beach. Oh, and bring your wife along as well to help you host I think that was the first time I met you properly actually and Julia and what a fantastic experience at that point

Andy: 44:35

It was enough to turn heads wasn't it to turn a young engineers head

Steve Whitmarsh: 44:39

Absolutely It was I did not have any doubts from that moment on. This is definitely a far nicer environment to be working in. And from that moment on, I haven't looked back really, it's been a really enjoyable ride ever since then,

Andy: 45:02

and you were good at the leasing side as well. And I know that because I was doing fleet sales at the time. So in a sort of neighbouring team and you delivered on to my my results, it was about 200 Rover 200s. You did a deal with with a company that boosted my own particular results that year, I'm still grateful and hence bringing it up now to say thank you for that deal back in 1997 or 1998. whenever it was,

Steve Whitmarsh: 45:34

it was Manpower for the Rank Xerox account. And that deal was conceived over a beer with a chap called Derek Thornton who worked for fleet management services, FMS at the time, and we'd been go karting in Northampton. We were staying in a hotel in Northampton, quite late, we had a beer and he told me he had this opportunity. And he couldn't get Vauxhall Corsas down to the right rental. So we decided to have a go at getting Rover 200s into the right rental. And lo and behold, we did because I had a good residual value better spec. Xerox, we're over the moon with it. Manpower were over the moon with it, it just ticked all the boxes, it was lovely.

Andy: 46:23

So those were happy days. So tell me a little bit then about how you progressed from there.

Steve Whitmarsh: 46:29

So that would be 97. I started there. The year I got married, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I'd built great relationships in the north of the country in the northern area, north north of the country, with all the leasing companies, there wasn't a director of a leasing company, I didn't have their mobile phone number of and that I couldn't pick the phone up to and ask for a bit of advice or bit of help or whether they wanted to buy a batch of vehicles.

Andy: 46:55

Right. So that's really interesting that you have gone in there, and you've gone in at a senior level within the leasing companies. So you, I wonder how much of that because you had matured, you'd had such responsibility at an early age and such a senior role at the age of 22, whether that supported your sort of approach and gravatas when he got into those businesses?

Steve Whitmarsh: 47:24

I think it did. And some of those directors actually did question what on earth I was doing there at I forget where I must have been 24 Just going on 25 At the time, who am I to advise them on residual values and whole life costs and etc, vehicle positioning, etc, etc. But the fact that I had tread the boards, I had done an apprenticeship I had been in engineering, I had been a production manager definitely helped. And there was one chap who's very well known in our industry of course, Nigel Stead had done an apprenticeship with Rover Group, or British Leyland in those days, albeit it was a commercial apprenticeship. So an administration apprenticeship, if you like, rather than an engineering apprenticeship, and had found his way into vehicle finance, via that route. And I'd followed followed a similar path. But via engineering, but having done an apprenticeship, and that that helped quite a lot. And quite a lot of my peers at the time, Steve Harris was an Austin apprentice. And quite a lot of senior people in Rover Group had gone through the apprenticeship route, albeit not necessarily engineering, they'd gone through the commercial student apprenticeship route, but same path, same qualifications, but in a different discipline. So it did help me a lot. And I was just able to prove myself through hard work, responding quickly doing what I said I would do. And having been on the other side of the fence in latter years, where I'm relying on certain manufacturer reps to come back to me. It's not a hard job, you just need to do what you promised that you're going to do in a timely manner. And that's all I did. And you'd be amazed how many don't do that even today.

Andy: 49:22

So I mean, you are very personable, very approachable, very friendly, very warm, genuine person and also obviously intelligent and very well skilled. So I can understand you building those. You could have a sensible conversation with 24 year old Steve. If you were director of a leasing company and be quite impressed probably by your background and what you've done. How did it feel for you going from having 200 people who you were responsible for to really being just responsible for yourself and your sales target?

Steve Whitmarsh: 49:59

That was a bit Bizarre I'll be honest with you, but also quite a relief because, as I say, it'd been quite an aggressive environment it had not necessarily aggressive towards me, but just a alpha male dominated environment, very unionised. And I was at the beck and call of a lot of people. And all of a sudden I wasn't, I still worked the long hours and put the hours in, but I was responsible to myself, for my own targets, and also to the wide, much smaller but wider team of the leasing team. And then the wider corporate sales team that we were all part of.

Andy: 50:36

So you mentioned that at the interview, Steve Harris asked you, you know, you've got more direct reports than I have why you coming over here. So you clearly weren't looking to build an empire that wasn't your drive, you would have had a better chance to build an empire if you like in the manufacturing side. What was motivating you What were you looking for? Was it just a change.

Steve Whitmarsh: 50:59

Just a change I think, yeah, so a bit of variety. I just wanted to try something new, something different. And I think that possibly stems from moving every two to four years as a child. And then throughout my

Andy: 51:14

Yeah, novelty, variety. You get that sort of inbuilt clock going.

Steve Whitmarsh: 51:19

Yeah. So every three months during the apprenticeship was a different placement, different parts of the business. And then really three years in manufacturing in the same environment, albeit great fun. Still got friends from that period. Now. It was definitely time for a change.

Andy: 51:36

So you've got into leasing. You got into Jeff's team, super guy. Yeah. David Stevens helped you enormously in the early days teaching you the ropes, and I'm sure you were a quick learner. And then you had it all signed, sealed and delivered by the Freelander launch which showed you how life could be how the other half live, if you like on the commercial side of the business. And so how long did you stay in that team and what happened next?

Steve Whitmarsh: 52:07

So I was in the team right up until BMW divested themselves of Rover Group, to the various people picking over the pieces. Unfortunately, it was really sad time. That was I was living in Warwick at the time. And I'd grown up through my apprenticeship and into my early years of my career with Rover Group under the British Aerospace ownership. And it was written in the mission statement and drilled into us that it was a job for life. And Rover Group would always be there and you had a job for life. Those that wanted to work at Rover Group, could always work at Rover Group, to put the effort in, there's a job for life. And I believed that naively. But it was quite reassuring, because in 92, or 93, my dad was made redundant from Renault after 21 years of service and several house moves and lots of upheaval for the family. And it sort of drilled into me that loyalty, in many cases is only one way. And I swore at that point that I've never ever get myself into a position where I'd be made redundant or where I would not be in control of my own destiny. I think going back you asked for the reason why I moved out of manufacturing into corporate sales. And maybe that was part of the mindset at that point. Manufacturing, I wasn't in control of my own destiny. At that point, BMW, were moving production abroad for the diesel engine. I was part of a big corporate, I was as good as the team around me. And it was a very big team and the production performance that we were able to achieve. Whereas going into corporate sales, northern area leasing manager, target for me, and only me, I was suddenly back in control. So maybe that perhaps in hindsight, now we're talking about it. Unwittingly it was perhaps one of my drivers and to suddenly be out of control again, because BMW were divesting themselves of the group unnerved me a little bit and I was asked to join the Landrover side of the business by some members of the corporate sales team at that point on the Landrover side, unfortunately, I was told that that wasn't possible because too much of my time, although I was multi branded, too much of my time was spent with Rover Cars. So I had to stay on the rover car side of the business. But we're also told at the same time that

Andy: 54:42

Because Landrover was going to Ford at that point,

Steve Whitmarsh: 54:45

that was Yeah. And Andy Bruce asked me to come over to the Land Rover side and apply to HR to get me over to the Land Rover side but unfortunately, everyone stood in my way, which is a real shame because Land Rover was my

Andy: 55:00

was your birth right already

Steve Whitmarsh: 55:02

But I'd been Landrover, focused throughout my career ex chairman of the apprentice Association and all sorts of things. So that was a bit of a blow. But we were told at the same time that if we applied for voluntary redundancy, we would probably get it. So I applied for voluntary redundancy and didn't get it. But in the meantime, had applied for a position as southern area leasing, and rental manager for Volvo cars. And was offered the role with Volvo cars. And I said, Great, thank you very much. I'd like to accept but can you just delay the start? Because I'm still trying to get my voluntary redundancy? Yes, okay. we'll be patient. And three weeks later, it was obvious I wasn't going to get my voluntary redundancy. Unwittingly, I think myself and another colleague outdid each other for voluntary redundancy, because we've both fought very hard for it. And then both and Rover Cars said that's fine. you've both got a job then. He knows who he is. We didn't help each other unwittingly, we didn't mean to so I left Rover and went to Volvo cars, working for a chap called John Wallace, who was a lovely gentleman. We're friends now. And he became more of a friend than a manager. And I have to say, my time at Volvo was just fantastic. We smashed every target we'd got it was quite a defining time for Volvo. They were changing from boxy design to much more sporty and exciting designs. My wife wasn't particularly enthused when she heard that I'd landed a job at Volvo. I think her words were a great you're going to be driving an estate car then, no, no, they make coupes and convertibles and I drove in an estate car for the first few months. But I had had a ball. They were a lovely business to work for. They're very Scandinavian in their outlook. They were very family orientated. I remember having the interview and they said, Oh, how many days holiday do you get? I get 27 Because I've got more than 11 years of service with Rover Group. Okay, well, everyone gets 28 days. How many cars do you get? well, I I get a company car and two management cars. Okay, well, everyone gets three cars here anyway, and you'll get an extra one. Right? Okay, or something along those lines. May have been three, not four. I can't quite remember. But it was what sort of pension do you get when I contribute? But it's final salary, okay, it's final salary here, but it's non contributory. And everything was better? Wow, why didn't I look outside the four walls earlier, and I had a ball. Some of the nicest people I've ever met in my career worked at Volvo in those days. Yeah, we just had a lot of fun. We smashed every target. It was it was brilliant.

Andy: 58:04

And that was doing a similar role?

Steve Whitmarsh: 58:06

Yeah, so I conquered the north of the country with Rover, and knew most of the directors or virtually every director in every leasing company. And then set about doing the same in the south and built relationships in the south of the country with all the leasing companies in the south and had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Again, there were very few directors of leasing companies I couldn't pick the phone up to and mobile, personal mobile phone and have a conversation with

Andy: 58:36

Yeah, used the same modus operandi to conquer the south. Well done. And how long did you stay with Volvo? Then Steve, did you stay in that role? Or did what happened?

Steve Whitmarsh: 58:47

I stayed in that role. There's pros and cons to being in such a lovely environment. The Pro is it's a great environment to work in. But the con is that no one ever leaves no one ever leaves. There's there's very limited promotion because you're waiting for someone to leave so you can move up to their role when someone does leave the competition's intense and it tends to be service based rather than than qualification or performance based. And whilst it was a very safe, sound, enjoyable environment with some fabulous people, and some great product. After nearly three years, it was time for me to move on again, really. And I got approached by a small leasing company to join them as a head of sales. And I had to think long and hard about it but they kept asking me and asking me and eventually I left and it was for pretty much the same pay but less pension, less this holidays. Less cars less benefits, but with the promise or inference well out right promise actually of shares in the business and therefore, some skin in the game, if you like a stake in the business, so I left, and it was a bit of a brave move. And it became fairly obvious fairly quickly that the shares were not going to happen. And it's probably because it wasn't in necessarily in the control of the directors. At the time, it was actually probably the investors in the business at the time. That was within a couple of months, there was nothing in writing, there was nothing provided there was no plan. And I felt somewhat wronged, I think. But nevertheless, I set about putting quite a lot of effort into the business, we were on the in the Sunday Times fast track. 100 is the 27th, fastest growing privately owned company in the UK at the time, we grew the fleet to nearly 2000 vehicles from a standing base of about 400 in two years. And I learned an awful lot. And I had a lot of fun. So whilst some of the promises weren't kept, I've still got the utmost respect for the people that were there, that I worked with, and worked for, and still friends with them. Yeah, it didn't quite pan out as I expected. But it was a great learning ground with some great people with some great customers. And I wouldn't be where I am today without having had that experience. So I'm very grateful for those. It was just over two years, very grateful for that experience. And I learned some good things, I learned some bad things, and and it all helped contribute towards shaping me for the future.

Andy: 1:01:40

There was a tone we don't have background music during these conversations. But if we did, I think the composer would have changed the tone a little bit for that bit, it sounded like this was the first point an incredible career journey, where you had a bit of a wobble if you like, or things didn't quite go. As they had been doing the incredible trajectory you'd had of success and great environments and things just getting better. It had a bit of a correction took place here somehow, but you've described it very diplomatically, you're treading very carefully and being, you know, deliberately looking for what you learned from it, what you took away, contributed to your future success and the gratitude that you have and the respect that you have for those people.

Steve Whitmarsh: 1:02:33

Yes, absolutely. No. And I don't regret it at all. As I say I had an awful lot of fun, and learned an awful lot. So it was great. But it got to a point after round two and a half years that it wasn't for me anymore. And I don't think I was for them. And we had a sensible chat. And I agreed that I would find a role elsewhere.

Andy: 1:03:01

Right, so that not getting the equity in the business. Do you think things would have panned out differently? If you had? Or culturally, would it have just you'd have realised after two and a half years, this isn't for me,

Steve Whitmarsh: 1:03:16

I think it would have kept me there. But whether culturally it would have been right for me. I don't know. If I'm honest, I don't I don't know. It's difficult to say. Because I think if I'd had equity in the business, it would have potentially changed my approach anyway. And therefore I may have had more influence and may have shaped the business more. And therefore that would have shaped my my approach to the business and the business's future one would hope so it's very difficult to tell

Andy: 1:03:46

yeah, there's no point you can't you don't get the chance to revisit these and run them differently. And no, I'm not going to that we don't need to dwell in this place. Steve thank you for sharing it because I'm particularly thanking you for sharing it because it just makes these conversations even better when you have the reality that not everything this guy touched turned to gold.

Steve Whitmarsh: 1:04:09

Absolutely. And and I fallen quite ill with a burst appendix. I had appendicitis. I had some pains went to the doctor. I think it's appendicitis, think you'd better go to hospital. Can't go to hospital. I've got a really important meeting with the CBI tomorrow in London. I was pitching for their fleet went to London the next day, won the business with the CBI for the leasing company, I was working for then got home and my appendix burst. I was rushed into hospital and then spent three weeks in hospital recovering from a burst appendix nasty operations and things like that. So I came out of hospital and three weeks later, my first daughter was born, which is obviously huge celebration. And it was that point, I realised, I mean I nearly nearly passed away with the burst appendix. And then obviously the birth of new life and things like that I realised that it just wasn't for me, that environment anymore, and I wasn't for them. And we had a mutual understanding. And it was better that it was a mutual understanding and was dealt with amicably like that. And I agreed to start applying for other jobs. So I still worked for the business, but started applying for other jobs. And my default position was to go back into the manufacturing world. That was the world that I liked, I enjoyed had a certain level of security because only realising talking to you about that, I've been searching for that security, I think all the way through my career, and wanted to go back to big corporate security manufacturers, they'll be here forever. Don't worry about Rover Group. It'll be here forever. How many cars? five breakdown vans? But it was much harder to get back into a manufacturer once you'd left than I ever realised. I applied for a number of manufacturer roles. I'd had a very successful career with manufacturers. I had a good reputation. I knew every leasing company in the land. And it was very much stonewalls couldn't get in. And and I to this day, don't understand why that happened. But I couldn't get into manufacturers. And an agency approached me to apply for a role as a Senior Account Manager for the RAC. And I said, Yeah, okay, wasn't bothered about it. If I'm honest with you, wasn't my world, I'd much rather be in cars not break down, or break down and business services, as they were in those days, went through the motions, had an interview, first interview and then was invited to go to a full day workshop in the Hilton Hotel in Warwick had that workshop. I actually really enjoyed the day it was great fun. And I hadn't got out to the car park before the agency No, it wasn't ridiculous package, but it was a well paid phoned me and said, they want you to work for them. And they package that was above what they'd advertised for to entice offered me a stupid package. me into the business and right, okay, well, it's big organisation is going to have that security, what could possibly go wrong. And so I joined RAC looking after the leasing company for RAC. So I'd gone from supplying the metal to supplying a service then, or a range of services to the same customers and the same directors and the same people that I'd been dealing with for the last 10 years, on and off. So it actually worked out really well. It was an environment that was very similar to the Volvo environment. And of course, it was a Lex business. And Volvo had been a Lex business. So the culturally they were very similar. Some of the directors of RAC had come from Volvo when they'd split out from the the old fashioned Lex business was which was quite a big organisation in those days. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was great as really relaxed. I could deal with all the people I knew really well. I was hitting my targets, I was renewing accounts, it was all great. And it was all going fine. And I was there for I think I was three years, two years in and I got promoted to they called it Senior Partnership Manager in those days, but it was actually heading up fleet which used to be called Fleet Director Role at RAC and I basically headed up fleet and commercial vehicle assistance for them. And again, I was enjoying myself it was great, no problem at all. We won the biggest accounts in the company's history, which was Motability, which was a big five year deal that we won. We were delivering better service than we'd ever delivered. And then Aviva disbanded the board of directors at RAC. Aviva owned Norwich union Aviva owned RAC at the time, and they disbanded the board of RAC and merged the corporate sales function of RAC with the corporate sales function of Aviva, and it was vastly different. Over here you've got quite a low value insurance product that is called break down but it's also got this huge operation attached to it with 1500 patrols on the road and 500 recovery trucks and a big technical team and lots of call centres and here you've got quite high value insurance products. That is there's no operation apart from an underwriting function and the claims team vastly different and the two corporate sales team Just couldn't really work together. And it starts to get complicated. And then it became very political as an organisation. And I decided that it was going to be really, really difficult for me to move up in the organisation. And I started looking for alternatives. But by this point, I worked for a number of large organisations. And clearly I kept being dissatisfied with my potential promotion opportunities, because I kept leaving, looking for something else. But part of my team was the direct sales function for RAC, which sold breakdown cover into essentially SME businesses in their world SME businesses was a few 100 vehicles or less. So I worked out that those SME businesses that are buying break down covered directly, clearly aren't being sold any other services by any other fleet management organisation, because if they were, then we'd be included. And there was a huge book of business. It was 125,000 vehicles, 150,000 vehicles, turned over eight or 9 million pounds in it's own right and was profitable. It was a nice pocket of business for RAC. And I approached some senior people at Aviva to see if I could buy that book of business off the Aviva. And some people at Aviva said Yes, why not? They were trying to sell anything they could at the time. And unbeknown to me at the time, they were actually trying to divest themselves of RAC. So I approached an investor to see whether they would help me fund the acquisition, they said it sounds like a good idea. And we, we like the idea of RAC keeping the breakdown supply, but us having the book then to sell other products and services to them, that makes perfect sense. Why wouldn't we do that that ready made book of business ripe for the picking. But then some senior managers at RAC probably quite rightly said, No, this is quite a valuable piece of business for us. And we like your idea, we think we'll build it ourselves. Thank you very much. And we'd like you to lead that. So rather than being an entrepreneur, we'd like you to be an intrapreneur and build it from within the business. Okay, well, that's something a bit different, I'll stay in my role but we'll set up this project to build a fleet management solution for RAC. But it was going to be very, very much needed to be very much a system led solution. And so we started designing what the system needed to do and how it would look. And we went to Norwich, talk to the IT team at Aviva and talk about what would be required and the development needed. And they agreed, yes, it's it makes sense. But your forecasted revenue of 30 million pounds a year isn't really enough to get it high on the book of work. So it's going to be two to three years before it reaches the top of the pile. And at that point I said that's not going to work, I'm not going to hang around for two to three years to then see whether we can build this system or not. So I went back to the same investors and said, it's not going to happen at RAC. And they're not going to sell us the book of business. But I still think there's some mileage in building a business that focuses on fleet management targeting SME businesses, and it would be a self fulfilling fleet management solution. So it'd be an online lead solution, where people would manage their fleets themselves. But we would give a set of tools and services and discounts and support to help these people run the fleets themselves. So rather than outsource replace your fleet team, no we want to help your fleet team be more efficient and save costs. That was a concept. And by jove they said yes. Okay, why not give it a go? They look to the plan and said, Well, it's cash generative. You don't need an awful lot to start the business in the grand scheme of things. And they agreed to invest and support us. So they supported us with a relatively were the us when you were starting out? modest investment. It was a business called Forward Group as So one of my team at RAC was a chap called Jamie joined me as an investment business called Forward Group at the time they were invested in fleet hire. So I knew Forward Group through fleet hire, because of course, they're releasing company I knew everyone in all the leasing companies. And Forward Group is actually a family orientated investment business and they've been remarkably supportive of us ever since sales director and a shareholder. And when I was told that I'd been awarded the money, I'd got the investment. I phoned a chap called Simon Simon Shiner, who was one of the management accountants at RAC and we worked quite closely together in my division, then he had his own division. But we worked very closely together. And I phoned him at home and said, I've been given quite a bit of money, and I need someone to stop me spending it. And he said Sounds perfect to me, I'm ideal for the job. And I can tell you now he is perfect for that job.

Andy: 1:15:32

He's not loosened up at all.

Steve Whitmarsh: 1:15:34

Not at all. But that's not a bad thing. And I'll explain why that's not that wasn't a bad thing, certainly in the early days. So the three of us founded the business, Multi Fleet Vehicle Management Limited trading is runyourfleet.com.

Andy: 1:15:51

And when did you found the business?

Steve Whitmarsh: 1:15:53

January 2011. And then reality struck because we had a blank piece of paper. We had no customers no system. It was a proper ground up, new start business. And we were a good team together. Simon was very good at controlling cash, Jamie was very good at orchestrating the sales strategy. And we all collaborated together in terms of system design, and how we would get to first base. We recruited some staff, we had a deal with a fuel card company to offer fleet management services to their fuel card customers, which they committed to putting 20,000 vehicles on our platform in the first six months of go live. And we'd written the heads of terms for this and it was all looking great. And they actually put 20 vehicles on in the first six months. And suddenly, life became very hard. And we stopped taking salaries and we had to right size, the business. The people we've recruited to cope with the 20,000 vehicles had to be made redundant. We went from a team of 10 back down to a team of four and three of us were directors. And all of us were selling all of us were on the phone. And everyone was doing everything the Startup Reality bit and we had to ask for a bit more money to keep ourselves going. But by this point, we had a system and we had some customers buying from us. And there was light at the end of the tunnel. We knew that as soon as you get that first customer purchasing, you know that actually someone thinks there's value in this so something's got to be right here. And we ploughed on and ploughed on and we used some clever marketing tools with email marketing and laser sharp focus on only phoning the opens and the click throughs. And you know the usual telesales marketing tricks that none of us were particularly experienced at. And we've slowly started growing the fleet. It was slow and it was hard work. And then we landed a deal with United Rental Group. We'd picked up one of the United rental licensees by accident because lots of the small rental companies would call themselves anything but a rental company. Because lots of break down companies and other providers of services didn't like dealing with rental companies, because the high use vehicles, the high usage for breakdown cover. Everyone charges them a premium. So we'd picked up a company that was called something textiles. I can't remember the name of it. And one of the directors of United rental group phoned me who I knew very well phoned me and said, you've picked up one of our licensees and just want to have a chat with you. I'm so sorry. I can assure you it's not intentional. We have no intention of going into of servicing the rental market at all. So well, well, don't be so hasty, just saying that you've got a really good service. And that you're offering breakdown cover and you're offering light touch maintenance and fleet management services when they need it. And they're away from base. Yeah, that's right. That's what we're doing. They absolutely love it. Can I come and see you because we'd like to do a deal. Right, okay. I thought I was gonna be told off by you. So, we did a deal. And they promoted us to their licensees, and we grew the fleet, then very quickly over the next 12 months, with a particular focus on the rental market, but by accident, and it saved the business because it grew the fleet very quickly. It gave us cash very quickly. And we didn't do a bad job of servicing that those fleets and Practical Car and Van Rental got wind of it, and came to see us and said they'd like to do a deal. So we did a deal with Practical as well. And they promoted us to their franchisees. And all of a sudden, we were, we were very big in the rental market totally without intention

Andy: 1:20:16

against your better judgement.

Steve Whitmarsh: 1:20:20

But it gave the business a rock solid foundation, and quite a lot of revenue and quite a lot of fleet size for us to then exercise our purchasing scale, which then gave us an entry into the end user market, which is really where we always wanted to focus the business. In the meantime, Jamie had left the business because we'd had to right size, the business again, the cashflow issues, that sort of thing. And we we're a bit too top heavy with the number of directors we had versus the customers and the and the rest of the staff. And it was real shame, but we're still great friends, and he was a huge influence on the business. It was sad times. But we were growing and we were moving forward. And then we started to pick up more and more accounts, more and more businesses. And we haven't looked back since really, we're now looking forward to celebrating our 30,000th vehicle coming onto the fleet. Hopefully, in the next few weeks. As of this morning, we're at 29,760 Something vehicles. So we're edging ever closer and growing by some days you wake up in the morning, we have a bean count every day, and it's increased by 35 vehicles, it's increased by 20 vehicles. And these are accounts signing up themselves, adding their vehicles onto the platform themselves, choosing their breakdown cover choosing their maintenance levels, buying our products and services online paying by direct debit, very often without talking to a human being. And it's just grows very nicely. And we seem to have landed a nice niche area of the fleet market. But we're also picking up some much larger end user fleets now as well. And we do full outsource. It's not all self service fleet management, there is a level that is self service fleet management. And it starts at a very low cost. But we also do full outsource fleet management, which is still a much lower cost than a lot of our competitors. But yes, we will act as a fleet department and run someone's fleet for them without any problem at all, with our team of 34 staff. And it's been incredibly good fun to get here, much harder than I ever thought it would be. Had lots of wobbles along the way wondered what on earth I'd done, didn't take a salary for a while, took a reduced salary for a long time. And this year, we will we'll break through 30,000 vehicles on fleet for fleet management, we should break through 1000 vehicles on leasing on our own paper, which doesn't sound very much. But considering we've had two years of pandemic, it's it's fine. We're quite happy with that. And we've recently expanded our daily rental offering and this year we will rent more than 200,000 days to businesses across the UK on our corporate rental programme.

Andy: 1:23:21

What a wonderful, wonderful story. And what a happy ending. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you, Steve. So that brings us up to the present

Steve Whitmarsh: 1:23:36

Yes, yeah. And we still have the same investors Forward Group who have been incredibly patient over 11 years. They're not a typical VC, they tend to be a longer term investor tends to be somewhere between 10 and 15 years. We're 11 and a half years in, they've been with us for the journey, very grateful to them, they're friends more than investors really, without their support, we probably wouldn't have survived through some of the some of the tougher times. But there were really tough times. And that's made it really difficult for other people to copy us. Because to get that level of volume is really hard. It's a high volume, low margin business. So to get to that high volume is really tough.

Andy: 1:24:20

And without it, it doesn't stack up.

Steve Whitmarsh: 1:24:22

No. We have over 99% retention rate of customers, those that open an account with us keep an account with us. Sometimes their fleet size ebbs and flows, but that's part of our offering. That's what we sell. Very few companies leave us. They like the service. They like the flexibility. We're probably the largest subscriber service to SMEs in the UK now in the automotive space.

Andy: 1:24:49

I think people listening to this I've known you since 1997. So what 25 years and one of the first thing you did was give me 200 cars off my target. So obviously, I might be a little biased. But I have a feeling that people listening to you, Steve, that beautiful way you told your story, there'll be rooting for you. And they will be just as thrilled that it's come to what it has. As I am, I'd like to think so. So, is there anything I haven't asked you that you think I should have done? If I if I tipped you upside down and shook you? Are there other golden nuggets that I might have missed out?

Steve Whitmarsh: 1:25:32

I don't think so. I think probably, hopefully, I haven't bored you too much. And it's quite refreshing to be able to look back and and realise that you've covered an awful lot more than than you ever thought. And it's been quite a journey. And it's hopefully it's nowhere near over yet. And we've got, we've got a long way to go as a business and hopefully personally and as a team. We've got quite exciting plans for the business as it stands today. And new markets to go into and new customers to win hopefully, and we're just having a having a lot of fun. And hopefully providing a good service to our customer base. That's what it's all about. And if, if our reputation starts to fall then, I will leave the business and fall on my sword. That's everything to me.

Andy: 1:26:23

What a beautiful place to stop. A lovely a mic drop moment ever there was one. So thank you again. It's been an absolute pleasure to hear your story. And I look forward to speaking to you again soon.

Steve Whitmarsh: 1:26:36

Brilliant. Thanks, Andy. You're a top man.

Andy: 1:26:43

You've been listening to Career-view Mirror with me, Andy follows I hope you found some helpful points to reflect on in Steve's story that can help you with your own career journey, or that of those you lead parent or mentor, you are unique. And during my conversation with Steve, you will have picked up on topics that resonate with you. A few things I noticed were the fact that he was the youngest production manager in Landrovers history. He got to manufacture that component that he'd been involved in designing. And the emphasis he placed on the network that he was able to build up across engineering functions and how that enabled him to get things done. The grounding he had in the factory and the confidence and gravatas that that would have given him when later meeting directors of leasing companies when he transitioned into the commercial side of the business, the importance of specific individuals who brought him into their teams, whether that was in the production environment or the commercial environment, and that helped him along the way. For example, Jeff Payton Brawl giving him a role from a manufacturing background. He was coming from manufacturing background, and allowing Him to come into the leasing team. Steve gradually getting to know all of the leasing companies first in the north of the UK and then the south and how he was later able to leverage those relationships in his role for the RAC. How looking for security seemed to feature and how that influenced his career decisions. And finally, how he spotted the idea to provide fleet management services to smaller fleets, acted on it secured the investment, and has now spent over 10 years building a successful self service fleet management company. You can contact Steve via LinkedIn and we'll put links in the show notes to this episode. We publish these episodes to celebrate my guests careers, listen to their stories and learn from their experiences. And I am genuinely interested in what resonates. Thank you to all of you for sharing your feedback. Thanks also to Hannah, and Julia who as the Career-view Mirror team here at Aquilae. work so hard to deliver these episodes to you. And remember folks if you know people who would benefit from hearing these stories, please show them thanks for listening