Monday, May 2, 2015—the key turns, the door opens. Before us lie 36m2 of adventure. Our very first office!
We picked up the first pieces of furniture from an office liquidation and had already set them up in the new office a few days ago. But today is when things really get started! My previous employment has ended, and we still have a lot of work ahead of us before we can launch our own company. The goal is to achieve this in 3 months:
Brand & Gleinser GmbH
Brand & Gleinser—that’s us, Stefan Brand and Leander Gleinser. We’re both civil engineers from Biberach University of Applied Sciences. But the question we still need to clarify and define over the next three months is: What should “Brand & Gleinser GmbH” become? An engineering firm specializing in structural design and structural analysis—that much was clear. But is that enough to establish ourselves in the market? Mind you, we haven’t invented any exciting new product or come up with a completely new and innovative business idea. We are two civil engineers who want to start our own business in an existing market. A market that has been around for a very long time and where competition is fierce.
So we still have a lot of work ahead of us. We need to finish writing the business plan and resolve the remaining open questions in the process. We need to secure funding, get the legal matters in order, and acquire the necessary equipment.
On July 15, 2015, the big day finally arrived. We met with our lawyer at the notary’s office to have our company entered in the commercial register. Now we were the bosses of our own company.
But that’s not how it felt that day. It was more like just another item checked off a long to-do list—a list that was still far from complete.
What’s it actually like to be the boss of your own company? A question we’ve never had time to address, and one that you can surely only figure out for yourself in hindsight, with some distance.
Brand & Gleinser GmbH
Since August 2015, we have been a structural engineering firm! We offer the highest level of service, going beyond what is typically expected of an engineering firm. We are active in both concrete and masonry construction as well as steel construction. This allows us to minimize interfaces and errors in the design process. This is further enhanced by our ability to provide all necessary construction and fabrication documents—whether reinforcement drawings or steel fabrication shop drawings—tailored to each client’s specific needs. Through our nearly 8 years of professional experience in international cement plant construction, we have learned to adapt flexibly to a wide variety of design requirements and design environments.
But let’s go all the way back. How did we come up with the idea of starting our own business with our own office?
Even while we were still in college, it was clear to us that self-employment could be not only a possibility but also a career goal. Not only did we both attend the same university, but we’ve also been working together for the same employer since 2008. In the process, we realized that we always complemented each other well—whether tackling challenging technical tasks or handling administrative and business matters—and that we always greatly valued each other’s opinions. As a result, the idea of starting a business together came up time and again during our years of working side by side.
At the end of a long, boozy evening at the “Hinteres Kreuz” in Ulm, we decided that we would start our own business, together as a team, in the coming years…sometime! That may have been 5 or 6 years ago now. But the decision was always on our minds, and we’d bring it up every now and then.
There were several reasons behind the decision to finally take this step now.
Above all, we see this as a necessary step in our personal development. Our goal is to work in a way that is completely self-directed and self-managed! This was no longer possible in the long term while working as employees.
We wanted to build a company based on our own vision, structures, and values
In our opinion, to work effectively, it is essential that we be able to follow through on the decisions and solutions we believe in, without any ifs or buts. But that is precisely what is not possible in the long run when working as an employee. Over time, this leads to declining performance and stifles any kind of creative output. But this is what motivated us to start something new, to be our own bosses, and to bring our own ideas to life in the
Benefits for our customers and for us. So we had only one option: to strike out on our own.
And the market opportunities are nowhere near as bad as one might think. The inevitable shortage of skilled workers is, of course, a pervasive problem in our industry as well, and virtually all engineering firms are operating at more than 100% capacity. This situation is currently being exacerbated—and will certainly continue to be so in the coming years—by the long-overdue investment backlog in the areas of transportation infrastructure and residential construction. Added to this is our personal experience in the field of industrial and plant engineering, both nationally and internationally.
And so it wasn’t long before our first contract came in. In early August 2015, we received our first contract from a friend’s engineering firm, which was struggling with a heavy workload and a lack of capacity. And it was a surprisingly large project right off the bat! A parking garage with about 250 parking spaces and an estimated construction cost of about 6–7 million euros. We hadn’t even dared to dream of something like that. Although we only had to do preliminary planning in August 2015, we also had the option to do the detailed design for 2016. So we dove right into the work. In the following two weeks, we immediately started receiving more inquiries…without having done any significant business development up to that point. As a result, the first few weeks were already filled with work, and the first few months of business got off to a very positive start.
We really hadn’t expected such a start. But of course, this also brought its own set of problems. We didn’t have time for a proper marketing campaign, we didn’t have a website, and there were still many other things left undone that we wanted to tackle in the first few months, since we had actually expected very low workload during that period.
In the months that followed, however, things calmed down a bit again, so we were able to catch up on all of that.
Today, in October 2016, the company is just over one year old. The first projects have been successfully completed and the structures have already been built. We were also entrusted with the construction drawings for the parking garage and have successfully completed them. Our first projects mainly involved planning for plant construction in Denmark, Algeria, and Malaysia. But in addition to our core competency—structural engineering for plant construction—we have also been able to expand our business activities into other areas. These include renovations of existing buildings in Germany and Switzerland, as well as new civil and municipal construction projects.
Even though the heavy workload sometimes makes us doubt ourselves, our current financial figures show that we have every reason to be satisfied with Brand & Gleinser’s performance over the past 13 months. In our second fiscal year, we’re already breaking even and supporting ourselves through our own efforts; we might even turn a small profit by the end of the year. We were able to establish many new business contacts and once again impress existing ones with our performance.
However, the financial results also show that our thorough preparation, detailed planning, and research have paid off. For example, our revenue from August 2015 through December 2015 was only about €400 off target, and our expenses were even below the projected amounts. In the first half of 2016, we were only slightly above our projections, and the outlook for the second half of the year is also positive.
However, there are also issues we hadn’t anticipated. Thanks to sound financial planning and a strong capital base, irregular and delayed cash inflows haven’t been a problem, but the short-notice requests and project execution make it difficult to plan for the company’s development over the medium to long term. This is where we currently see the most significant difference between our theoretical plan and reality. Even though the annual average is in line with the plan, the quarterly figures can still fluctuate significantly. We need to get this under control in the future.
But even with strong demand, we still need solutions. Unfortunately, we’ve already had to turn down orders in our second fiscal year due to capacity constraints. We were unable to fulfill orders and inquiries from new customers—which we would have been very happy to handle—because there are currently only two of us. However, we already have some initial ideas and approaches for increasing our capacity in the future. Initial arrangements with third-party providers will enable us to handle peak periods a bit better, but expanding our in-house staff is, of course, also on the agenda for the medium term and should be implemented as soon as possible.
36m2 of adventure; looking back, the risk involved in this adventure was well calculated, but it was exciting every step of the way, and it will almost certainly remain exciting for years to come. 36m2 of adventure also means 36m2 of opportunities, 36m2 of the future.
So far, our personal experience has been very positive, and we believe we made the right decision.
For anyone who is also considering an independent—and, above all, self-determined—work environment, we can offer this advice based on our experience: don’t rush into things. A fundamental point is to prepare thoroughly—even if it takes several years from the initial idea to implementation—as this provides the necessary confidence, both personally and professionally, to embark on this adventure. This also requires the necessary perseverance and, ultimately, the courage to take that final, decisive step.
You’ll never know if something works just by thinking about it. Only when you take that decisive step and put your ideas into action will you find out whether something works or not. And if it does work, so much the better.
Stefan Brand and Leander Gleinser.
Contact:
Marlene-Dietrich-Str. 5
89231 Neu-Ulm
Tel: 0731/98588-635
info@brand-gleinser.com
www.brand-gleinser.de/
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