About Matthew
Plumbing apprentice. Nearly homeless. Built it back properly.
This is the real version, not the highlight reel.
Starting out on the tools
I started as a plumbing apprentice like a lot of tradespeople reading this: learn the trade, get good with your hands, get your own van eventually. That part I could do. Nobody teaches you the business side, and I found that out the hard way.
I went self-employed and started my own plumbing and heating business. Good at the work, hopeless at the business. Pricing jobs on a guess, no proper system for chasing invoices, taking on whatever came in because I couldn't afford to say no to anything.
Homeless, and starting again from a tent
No dressing this up: I lost my home. My business had put me in a worse spot than working for someone else ever did, and for a while, a tent was where I lived. That's the bit most people in this position never admit out loud, so I will.
Turning it around meant learning, fast, the things nobody teaches an apprentice: how to price properly, how to market so the phone rings without you begging for work, how to build a team instead of doing every job yourself, and how to keep more of what you earn instead of handing it all to tax and bad decisions.
Building SmartChoice Dental
Once I'd fixed how I ran a trade business, I took that same system and built SmartChoice Dental into a solid, profitable business: proof that what turned my plumbing business around wasn't a fluke, it was a repeatable way of operating.
SmartChoice Dental gave me the base to start investing properly, and that's where the property side started.
A multi-million-pound property portfolio
Off the back of SmartChoice Dental, I built a property portfolio worth multiple millions. Same principles as the trade business: know your numbers, be efficient with tax, don't be the bottleneck in your own operation.
Why Now
Why Trade to Tycoon exists
Most tradespeople are exactly where I was: good at the trade, one bad month away from serious trouble, with nobody around who's actually lived it and come out the other side. Trade to Tycoon is that system: sales, marketing, recruiting, customer service, tax efficiency, and using AI properly, taught by someone who did it on the tools, not in a boardroom.
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