Adrian Powell,co-owner and director of Active Workplace Solutions tells us a little bit more about himself and his journey with Active Workplace Solutions.
I left school having failed my A-levels (well I got a D and two E's) which destroyed my hopes of going to Polytechnic or University. I originally had a look at fisheries studies in Plymouth but I soon realised that wasn't something that I wanted to be doing.
My dad told me to get a job instead… so I donned his best suit which I amazingly fitted into, and went for an interview at Pickford Removals in High Wycombe. I had two interviews there, and was offered a job as a trainee branch manager. I was there for two and a half years, ending up as assistant manager at Reading.
I then was'head hunted' for a job as a manager at another removal company called Overs who were based in Camberley, Addlestone and Salisbury and I managed their Addlestone office for a while before being 'head hunted' back to Pickford's to manage the worst performing branch out of 130 branches! It was quite a task,but I succeeded in turning it around and it was at that point that I fell into commercial moving.
In between working at Pickford's and Overs, I also spent a year working with my dad selling second hand cars and, in that period, he won an award for selling the most secondhand cars for Skoda in that year. He picked up a nice parker pen and a holiday in Tenerife for my efforts!
After 3 years I was 'head hunted' back again to Overs, who by then decided to concentrate more on commercial moving. While I was there, I attended the FM show at Olympia and bumped into my old manager from Pickfords, who was working for Nexus, North American Van Lines. He approached me and I started working with him as a National Sales Manager. Shortly after he moved to work for MJF group – the largest Herman Miller dealer in Europe at the time - and I took over running Nexus, the commercial moving brand of North American Van Lines. Eventually I joined him again at MJF group working my way up to director over an 8 year period.