Great K&B businesses run on great systems.
About Tommy.
Not a coach who read about running a business. An operator who still runs one.
The journey
From stacking shelves to four showrooms that run without me.
The start
Thirteen years at B&Q
Stacking shelves taught me discipline and doing a job properly — but hard work alone wasn't moving my life forward.
First business
House Wizard
A one-man handyman business run from a beaten-up Vauxhall Corsa. Within two years I'd multiplied my old salary tenfold — and built myself another job.
Scaling up
Tommy Welsh Installations
Full renovations and high-end kitchens and bathrooms, started in our spare bedroom by my wife Esther and me. £1.2m turnover by year three. By year eight, £1.8m — and £263,000 net profit in a year I didn't set foot on a single site.
A hard decision
Closing a good business
After a decade, more than 1,000 projects and £2.1m turnover in our best year, I closed it — to focus on what we did best: kitchens and bathrooms.
Today
My Beautiful Kitchen & Bathroom
Built to run without me: four showrooms, a warehouse, an overseas support team and over 1,000 full kitchen and bathroom projects a year.
The systems
Building the backbone
These days I spend most of my time building: our own CRM and ordering system, 3D bathroom design and quoting, and an AI quote check trained on 30 years of rules.
The product
KBB Go
Turning our bathroom design software into a product for other kitchen and bathroom businesses. kbbgo.co.uk →
Now
Advisory and Build
Helping kitchen and bathroom owners through the messy middle — the help I wish I'd had.
On the tools, in the early years.
With part of the team today.
What I believe
Lessons learned the expensive way.
A business you can't walk away from isn't an asset.
It's the best-paid job you'll ever be trapped in.
Growth doesn't give you your time back.
It just raises the cost of being absent — unless the systems grow with it.
Your best people shouldn't be human search engines.
Get the knowledge out of their heads and into the system, so everyone can use it.
A showroom doesn't create customers.
It converts them. Get the leads flowing first, then build the room that closes them.
When someone leaves, ask if the job should exist.
The business you'd build today shouldn't look like the one you built ten years ago.
Earn the right to diversify.
Master one marketing channel until it's predictable and profitable. Then add the next.
Outside the business
What the business is for.
I take one full day a week just for myself. I play drums and guitar most days, and I'm out at least two nights a week playing in pubs and clubs with my son or friends. I train with my wife in our home gym, cook most nights, and I'm endlessly curious about how things work.
That's the point of building a business that runs without you: the time, energy and freedom to live the life you built it for.
Want to work together?
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