00:00 I'm Elliot McHugh, I'm a 22 year old entrepreneur and founder of Trade Warehouse and I'm also
00:10 a GB water polo goalkeeper.
00:15 If we go back to the pandemic, 2020, everything ground to a halt.
00:22 So I'm an athlete and I was training seven days a week and that sort of went down to
00:27 zero days a week in the pool alongside some land training.
00:31 And I actually started doing, like directing my focus into freelance web design.
00:37 So I set up my first agency and was doing sort of web design for clients across the
00:42 country cold calling.
00:44 At 20 I studied at Durham University and after helping my father's business, the metal roof
00:49 company, he was selling some cores of metal to installers across the UK, not in any commerce
00:55 capacity, but I noticed that gap in the market to sell construction materials online.
01:03 And I could see that people were moving away from buying sort of in brick and mortar stores
01:06 and they're actually buying online.
01:08 So I set up Trade Warehouse dot co dot UK.
01:11 Really our mission is to be the go to brand for construction materials in the UK.
01:20 I remember that day, the first, I think it was a hundred pound order that came in.
01:24 I remember going upstairs to my dad and celebrating it and we were like sort of dancing upstairs.
01:29 It was quite funny really.
01:32 And yeah, it's grown.
01:35 We breached the one million pound mark to sell only in the UK.
01:39 And really my goal is to grow into a 10, 20 million pound business in the coming years
01:44 and through the power of marketing and building, adding more products.
01:47 We've got over 5000 products on the site now.
01:53 It's important to recognize that there are a lot of challenges that come with being an
01:56 entrepreneur and doing your own thing.
01:58 You know, I think these days with social media, we see this kind of ideal life online.
02:02 You see influences portray that life, but it's not all pretty like that.
02:06 You know, I've had many failures and difficult moments along the way of growing the business.
02:11 You know, I remember the website went down and I was out.
02:15 We lost about 7,000 pounds in revenue in a day and it was really stressful.
02:20 We also had one where a bot attacked the site and brought it down and I had to get like
02:24 a cyber expert in and it's just those kind of stressful moments.
02:28 And at the time I saw them as unfixable, but you know, looking back, I realized that they
02:33 were just kind of small part, small steps to get me towards that next level.
02:39 I think the biggest barrier to starting is starting, but do acknowledge that it's not
02:43 going to be easy.
02:44 It's not going to be straightforward and there is barriers along the way.
02:47 You've just got to sort of overcome them and persevere.
02:51 And if you can do that, I think that flexibility that an entrepreneurial life can offer you
02:57 is really great.
02:58 And it's given me so much and it's transferable in a lot of what I do, particularly water
03:02 polo.
03:03 You know, I've represented Great Britain and England and I do that now.
03:08 And there's a lot of kind of similarities and parallels.
03:11 So doing your own thing and building that side hustle, I think is really important.
03:16 I train seven days a week and I've always maintained that.
03:21 You know, I started the sport at 15 years old.
03:25 My dream was to make the national team.
03:27 That was something I set out to do when I started.
03:30 And you know, I worked incredibly hard over and I got rejected from the national team
03:36 a couple of times as well.
03:37 I eventually made the under 19s and then now kind of seven years later at 22 on the England
03:42 and GB senior goalkeeper.
03:44 So I've been able to kind of travel around the world and all of these experiences I try
03:49 and then bring into business.
03:50 So when I'm meeting a supplier, when I'm going out to meet a customer, I will apply a lot
03:56 of those lessons about kind of leadership, about hard work, persistence, kind of builds
04:01 that self-discipline, which is just so transferable to business.
04:05 [MUSIC PLAYING]
04:09 you
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