However, it was the mid-eighties and jobs were scarce. My dad found me a job in a sheet metal fabrication business. I hated it, but it was work and that was that. Following an accident, I was let go, apparently, they didn’t need me!

This opened the door to what I wanted, to be a chef. Jobcentre, YTS into the HCITB in Cardiff to a helpful man called Fred Harrop. Given whites, told to report next day and the off I went. Working at the Park Hotel in Cardiff, amongst others, chef by weekday & KP by weekend, earning more washing pots that YTS.

A funny story, a young Sous chef who had bullied me in 1986, so much that I thought my dad was going to go down and have a word, came back into my life much later, I will get to this soon, but puts into focus my mantra do right by people always, as you don’t know who they are or where they will come back into your life; much like Ricky has.

So, being Welsh I also had a passion for rugby, and Cardiff in the 80s was a drab old place to be honest. In between split shifts I was passing the Army careers office one wet day, I decided to join the Army, until I got home, and my dad thankfully refused to sign for me to join the Welsh Guards. I was persuaded by the chap in the R.A.F careers office that if I joined, I could play rugby and travel, and I could join as a cook. This I did and on 9th December 1986 off I went to basic training not returning to live in Wales until 2015.

Having left the R.A.F in 1996, I joined my Wife who was still serving and lived in Scotland & Belgium working in very different jobs in each country but all leading to my eventual setting up of Wizard Recruitment which I sold in 2013. Wizard is still thriving to this day. Recruiting catering and care staff for national contracts, learning hard lessons along the way, dealing with happy clients, un-happy clients, stroppy chefs (come on we are) and some good chefs like Ricky, although he’s a stroppy one too!

Fast forward to 2016 we moved back to Wales, and I worked for 5 years for an amazingly proficient machine advising and selling HR and H&S packages, another learning curve that has helped me immensely.  Leaving was a tough decision, but the drive to set up a new business was too strong.

Here we go again, I had gripped and grinned with thousands of people in my HR Sales role and honestly, had to kiss many frogs to find trusted people back home in Wales to build a network again, often putting (a) in touch with (b) and introducing and networking my way through South Wales, to then start NB Intros that has now become Apollo Procurement.

Ricky and I have millions of years (it feels like anyway) behind us and are keen to keep working within business to help clients save money and make things smarter where we can.

Oh, the Sous Chef story. Well, some 20 years later I am sat in my office in Huntingdon 186 miles from Cardiff with the team busy filling bookings in walks said Chef. I hadn’t recognised him, but once he started talking himself up, and where he had worked and how good he was I looked up and asked him “did you work in the XXX Hotel in Cardiff in 1985/6. Yes! He said smiling. So did I and described how he had beaten me around the kitchen and made my life hell, and don’t let the door hit you in the backside on the way out!

It’s a small world! Be sure that if you are walking down the street and you see a client, an ex- colleague, that you can hold your head up high in the knowledge that if you’ve left a business, you worked with or for them and you did the best for and with them.

I look forward to working with businesses, sports clubs, and charities to help make efficiencies and smarter choices that mean better bottom lines.