Steven Hore from Cen Eng is a Taking Your Business Forward, TYBF5 cohort alumni.
This Kiwi Business Story is based on a podcast from 20 January 2022, and all figures quoted are from that time. You can enjoy the complete podcast here.
Tell us about your business and journey into business ownership?
Well, Central Engineering really exists for farmers and keeps farming moving forward. Our roots are in agricultural repair shops. We fix a lot of farm machinery. We are evolving into making our own products and manufacturing. We have some good products that we are selling to local customers, but we want to take that further afield.
I trained in engineering at Polytech in Canterbury University. I worked as a production engineer at Fisher and Paykel, and then in mining at Oceana Gold. I learned some solid engineering skills at those places. Then my wife and I took the leap. At about the same time, we got married and started a consulting business, and we were selling CAD software. We then saw an opportunity with some legislation that the government brought in around irrigation and started the flow metering business. It went well and on the back of that we purchased the local engineering workshop, and it has been more successful than we thought and has been growing ever since.
What is a piece of advice that you would have given yourself at the start of your Business Ownership journey, knowing what you know now?
The last few years, I have really had to get stuck into self-management. I had a head injury in 2018, like a concussion, and I really had to become obsessed with sleep hygiene and posture and stress management. I think, if I had started that journey a bit earlier in life, it could have been a good thing.
How did you hear about The Icehouse?
Kim, my wife, found out about it. I am not sure where from, and we were originally looking at the Owner Manager Programme. We were too small for the cut off and I only just recently found out about this course earlier in the year, and it seemed like a much better fit.
What were your key takeaway points from Taking Your Business Forward?
I thought The Icehouse did an excellent job of it. Really professional, and the content was good. For us we have used it as an overall tool to develop what we are doing into manufacturing. Also having that consistent time where you are thinking about the business, you are doing things, and it was good. I also really loved networking, the way the course was set up was that you learnt one week's content and then the next week you were talking to the other guys about the content and how to apply it to your business, which is an effective way of doing it and it was useful.