Yahoo Finance My first boss: Josh Gill, founder of Everflow, UK's fastest growing water supplier
The people who helped shape business leaders
Everflow, founded by CEO Josh Gill in 2017, disrupted the B2B utilities sector when England joined Scotland in opening its water market for competition. When business customers no longer had to buy their services from regional wholesalers Gill saw an opportunity and he took it.
Billed as the UK’s first carbon neutral water supplier, Everflow’s focus on sustainability and technology-led services have contributed to 51% growth year-on-year and made the company the third fastest growing company in Europe in 2021. Its turnover to December 2022 was £116.1m.
A few years into the job, Tel Sultan entrusted me with the North East branch of his engineering cost consultancy firm I had joined after graduating. Within a year I had managed to double the turnover for him.
Not everyone would have been willing to give a 23-year-old autonomy to grow their business but my first boss was different. Tel's willingness to take a chance on me taught me how important it is to identify people in Everflow who exhibit the same traits: being passionate about what they do and finding ways to take the company forward. I learnt from him how valuable it is to identify those talents and allow them the freedom to develop and accept that they will also make some mistakes.
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Tel would always be the loudest in the room. He would have a cheeky smile on his face and he would push people to be their best, and he was very generous with his time for people as well as financially.
For him, it was about encouraging talent from a young age, investing in people and identifying them to drive the business forward.
One of the things that Tel saw in me was that if I was working on a project I would also look for ways to improve the process. Looking for what more can be done, and pushing the boundaries in a way that other people aren’t, are key attributes for me today in business.
Another characteristic I always look for is people who inspire those around them. People who want to raise the bar of those around them, those who can lead change in a collaborative way and bring employees along with them. Not lone wolves doing their own thing.
While Tel would expect people to work long days, I actively promote working the hours people are contracted for. I want to help staff enjoy their work rather than seeing it as a reason to exist.
After leaving Tel’s company, I went to work for Northumbria Water and that's where I saw the opportunity in the water market. I then went back to Tel after two years with my idea for Everflow.
Launching the business seemed blindingly obvious to me. People often ask whether it was scary quitting my job. I’m probably more risk averse than a lot of entrepreneurs; I will only bet on a near enough sure thing. I knew enough of the market and there was a low chance of failure. The chance of huge success? Well, that was less sure but we have massively overachieved what we were originally expecting.
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There are a combination of factors as to why. We have assembled a great team of people, while no one else seemed to be targeting the SME segment. We deliberately targeted the market where there was no competition, we monopolised the market route through brokers by creating our own technology and making it simple for them to quote.
The reality is that businesses buying utilities want to spend as close to zero seconds as possible thinking about it. We needed to make it possible to sell water in one contact with a customer. This all propelled us and we are now replicating that in other utilities such as waste management, telecoms and energy.
We are also lobbying for smart meters in water. It is the single piece of the market that doesn’t work effectively for customers. There is a big push to get water efficiency in the market but it is very difficult to prove the benefits without realtime measuring what customers are using. No one will invest unless this is changed but we are getting there.
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I once received a single piece of advice about knowing who your customer is, being willing to say no to people and the need to simplify your propositions rather than trying to serve everyone. It completely changed how Everflow went to market.
I now give advice to other small business owners whenever I can. You never know what’s going to be important for other SMBs to hear, or what they haven’t got experience in.
Tel still keeps in touch regularly and follows the business and how it’s doing. It’s not always easy to stop, reflect and celebrate everything that has happened. But we try our best – it’s important to remember how we started.
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