The Business Village People "My business started by accident".

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the Business Village People podcast. Hello, I'm Davey Markwell, and welcome to the Business Village People podcast. This is episode five of series two. On this podcast, we showcase stories from the companies, service providers, and staff at the Business Village in Barnsley, South Yorkshire. Well, if you're ready, let's go. 

In this episode of Business Village People For some business, compliance requirements can be easily overlooked or forgotten due to the fact that the people are too busy actually doing the job.  We meet a chap who accidentally created a website that helps hauliers stay legal.  Also, a man who admits his management style is not to everyone's taste.

So much so that his office is not even in the same building as his employees. 

Lee Pritchard took the plunge and set up his own business just as the first COVID lockdown began. In four years since, Lee has established an award winning company providing transport compliance to the haulage industry. Here's Lee's story. 

An interactive website, so it provides um, Features such as compliance guidance, there's industry news, um, there's networking opportunities, um, for various things. It keeps, uh, operators compliant with regulations, uh, connected with the industry. And we're developing it all the time, um, so it's one of those where we've just added, um, other features to it, which includes fleet management.

Um, so, operators can send me their, um, service records, um, we upload that onto a fleet management system, so we can keep a close eye on them, make sure that they're, you know, they're, they're keeping legal and compliant. So it's, um, it's very interactive, um, but it is brand new. Um, we're, we're very sort of in its infancy, if you like.

So we're adding new features, we'll, we'll keep on growing, and hopefully it'll, um, it'll provide a good platform for, for many operators in the future.  So where did the platform come from? Did you create it or is it part of a franchise or? Yeah, it literally is. We, I created it, um, by mistake to be honest, and I will be honest.

So originally it was a conversation with a website developer. Um, and I literally asked, um, could we upgrade in, you know, update our website? And we had a good chat for about two hours, which wasn't, you know, scheduled. And all of a sudden, we come up with this platform where it was like, Okay, we'll not So we do our current website, we'll create a new website.

So we do have two websites. Um, one predominantly sort of telling everybody as a consultancy what we do. But then we have the Hawleyers Hub, which is obviously the interactive website. Um, so yeah, it was created by a mistake, but, but I love it and, and what it stands for. And, you know, we've got some good guys on there at the minute that are really seeing the benefits of it.

Um, so, so yeah, that's, that's where it is. Well, it was a big mistake, but not a big mistake, if you know what I mean. Mistakes can turn out good, can't they? You know, you learn from them. Yeah, we love it. I mean, I do. And, you know, like I say, it's getting updated every day and we keep on top of it. Um, but I've had a meeting this morning and, you know.

You know, a client's coming this morning. He just said, I'm loving it. You know, he's interacting with it because many operators, you see, and what we're finding is, is they're not transport people, so they struggle with a compliance side of things. And some of them are, you know, so run an operator license where they don't need a transport manager.

So this kind of platform creates that kind of interaction where they can go onto it, find out what they need and they can book a call with myself as well. So it's, it's, yeah, it's, it's really good. I'm passionate about it. I love it. And, you know, especially when you s