A former apprentice joiner who now has a property portfolio boasting over 350 homes has urged anyone thinking of starting their own business to ‘fail faster’.
Graeme Carling, alongside wife Leanne, began building the portfolio following the 2008 market crash with the pair snapping up discounted properties with the intention of creating a better lifestyle for themselves. Their first purchase was a mortgaged home in Aberdeen, with the couple being able to use loan options – some of which not available today – to then purchase a second property and build from there.
“We just wanted to earn enough money to replace our income from our jobs, but it wasn’t any great wealth plan,” Graeme told Project Scotland. “When the financial market started to crash, for the first time that I could remember property was on sale (at discounted prices). As people were getting out, we got in and started buying up the properties – it was terrifying to be doing the opposite to everyone else.”
The Carling Group has now grown to the point where it has become one of Scotland’s largest private residential property businesses.
The success came after years of what Graeme described as failure. He’d always had the intention of working for himself and seemingly struck gold in the early 2000s when he launched a small haulage firm that secured a contract with a major retailer to handle their online shopping. However, the supermarket soon brought the operation in-house and Graeme’s venture was wiped out practically overnight.
“I tell my son, who’s just leaving school, to fail faster,” Graeme added. “Get it wrong. Everyone’s going to fail – you’re going to have big failures and small failures and every one of them is a lesson for different reasons. I wished I started my businesses earlier and got it out the road. When I look back, I had no clue. So, going through that and the pain of it, getting your ego dented and having to lick your wounds – you see what you’re made of; so, there’s no doubt that helped me.”
After eventually finding success with property and being able to replace the income of their jobs with a handful of houses being let out, Graeme and Leanne headed for the ‘laptop lifestyle’ of managing their properties from the poolside in Spain.
“We did that for two weeks and hated it,” Graeme revealed, before telling how they had been so focused on just being able to get to a point where they could quit their jobs that they hadn’t really considered what they’d do with their time once it became a reality.
“When you get to that position there just becomes a new plan; we now couldn’t think of anything worse than sitting on the beach – that’s a load of rubbish because we’ve got so much work to do; we work 24/7, but we have all the time in the world still. You change, you evolve.”
Such evolution has been key to success, with Graeme revealing that he and Leanne are constantly scoping out new ventures to ensure they don’t stand still.
One key milestone was the launch of United Capital in 2019, which was launched with the vision of acquiring the best regional building services and facilities management companies. In May 2020, at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic, the firm acquired Glasgow-based Saltire Facilities Management to offer decarbonisation services and provide sustainable solutions to help meet ambitious environmental targets.
The launch of United Capital also came amidst pressing regulations coming into force for houses, with Graeme and Leanne aiming to bolster their own portfolio of properties after having poor experiences with some small contractors and finding difficulty in securing the services of larger firms for single property works.
“It was a no-brainer because everyone is going to have to upgrade and improve and that’s a good thing – because it keeps everyone honest and operating at the same rules,” Graeme explained. “As a landlord, really we should be looking at providing those services to other landlords and property owners. It also isn’t too far from what we knew in property, so it was just naturally evolving from owning properties to maintaining or improving them.”
United Capital has since won a host of contracts in both the public and private sectors, with it undertaking renovations, the installation of air source heat pumps, boilers, solar, and other M&E services.
The plan for Graeme and Leanne is to keep growing their businesses. Following Covid, they made the decision to move to Dubai due to the sense of ambition and urgency found in the city, with Graeme describing it as a ‘can do, pro-business, and pro-growth’ setting to test themselves in.
“Start quick, fail faster.” Graeme said, when asked what he’d say to anyone reading this who is perhaps considering starting their own construction or property business. “My dad always worked for somebody; he was always a good employee who worked his way up the ranks to MD and CEO of the company – but he would never start his own business because he had kids. Whereas my view was the complete opposite; I need to start my own business because I have kids. I didn’t want to end up like my dad hating my job, counting hours in the day, and never really having anything to show for it.
“So, for anyone looking to start, just start. Get in the game, fail faster, research it, and do what you’ve got to do. Don’t be reckless, but you’ve got to get in the game and understand that you’re going to fail at some point.”
