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by Philip Bristow
I'm always amused to see people's reactions when they ask me about my business, and I tell them that I run a computer company - and farm sheep as well.
When they ask how on earth I reconcile the two ventures, I say it's quite simple: Computers and sheep share the same essential qualities. They're logical and practical, although some sheep farmers might disagree!
I've always wanted to be a farmer since I was a kid. I even went to agricultural college, but it's true what they say, there are three ways to go into farming - patrimony (inherit the family farm), matrimony (marry into a farming family) or parsimony (savings, and I didn't have any of those).
So instead I joined the Milk Marketing Board in the late 1970s, and went on the road as a rep, selling the organisation's advisory services to farmers. It was a great way to learn sales skills, which I subsequently developed working for two big agricultural feed firms, Dalgety and then Bartholomew's, where I grew my sales patch from £50,000 to £600,000 a year.
Then came a complete career change. In 1988, a friend asked me to give him a hand at weekends with his business which supplied the cradles that window cleaners and maintenance staff use to work on the outside of tall buildings.
A change of industry was a real eye-opener, and we set up our own company. Over the next four years we won contracts to supply cradles in London, Paris, Scotland and at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. We were turning over £1.2 million a year and employing 14 people.
But I wasn't happy, because I was often away from my wife Jackie and our children Jeremy and Jennifer. I particularly regret not being there in their early years.
I also wanted to learn some different business skills, so I took a four-year Open University MBA course. But I needed to pay the bills, so it was back to the agricultural business.
I joined ADAS, the Agricultural Development Advisory Service, as a business manager to develop a department dealing with milk quota - helping dairy farmers across the UK trade with each other, with detailed information about milk,what type was in demand and where.
It was a huge, national project, but all the data was on bits of paper. So I persuaded ADAS to buy a couple of computers, and to send me on a course to learn how to write software. The computerisation of the project, which helped match milk buyers with sellers, was a big success, and within 18 months the turnover of my business unit grew from £450,000 per annum to £14 million.
By now, I was fascinated by computers. I bought an old Elonex, took it apart, and then built my own computer. It was also a time when PCs were becoming the "must have" for any business or home.
But with computers come problems, and more and more friends began to ask me to sort out their technical glitches. In 1995 I founded my own computer business, and placed a couple of small ads in the local paper. Within six weeks I had more work than I knew how to handle.
Today, I have a client base of businesses, charities and private individuals across the Weald, and employ a part-time engineer. I have a lot of repeat business so I don't do too much marketing, although I attend the Wealden Business Group's weekly networking breakfasts in Tenterden.
But I still had this hankering to realise my childhood dream of becoming a farmer. We have chickens at home, and I'd grown a few spuds, but when the chance cropped up to buy 30 sheep grazing on a farm at Hawkhurst, I jumped at it.
The outdoor environment is a complete contrast to fixing computers. Jackie and I spend the weekends looking after the sheep and maintaining the farm. We work pretty flat out at lambing time in March and April. We now have 80 sheep, whose lambs we fatten up and sell at Ashford market.
PBCS, my computer company, and the sheep farming give us a financially healthy living, although sheep sales make up a very small part. But I just love being on the farm, and we've even bought half-a-dozen pigs to add to our farming interests.
My business philosophy is to work hard enough to earn a comfortable living, and to leave sufficient time to enjoy family life. I think that's absolutely the right balance for us.
