Greg Cox
https://wesort.co.uk/about/greg-cox
Greg and I met at an exhibition in September 2014 and have become good friends through working together.
Looking back, we’ve known each other through three phases:
- 2014: 3 months, foundational systems
- 2017-2019: meeting most months, bedding in processes
- 2021-present: ad hoc conversations
Greg’s a fine designer-maker who considers the big picture, the fine details and the context. He seems to know nearly everyone in the East London woodworking sector and enjoy his work nearly as much as beer, guitars and flying.
2014: Phase 1: setting up
I met Greg while wandering around the trade exhibition Designjunction in September 2014. I was there working with Rothschild & Bickers. We had a short chat and later by email we arranged to meet at his workshop.
Soon after that, Greg emailed to say he had a brief and had secured some EU funding to pay for me. He wanted three months of meetings with a focus on:
- His offering: bespoke commissions, contract furniture (eg: products)
- Pricing: as a process and where the figures should be
- Sustaining focus: bespoke (clients) vs. product (self-initiated)
- Marketing: where to put his efforts
At this point, Greg was keen to pursue product ideas and not work entirely on clients-led projects. I felt this stemmed in part from his background in fine art. Over those months though it became clear Greg really enjoyed (most of) the collaborative nature with client. Plus promoting and selling a product is very hard - let alone competing on price.
During this time we also:
- Set up Google Apps for cloud admin (email, calendars, files, contacts) including some mail migration
- Tech support for laptop and phone (wasn’t quite as simple back then!)
- Learned some lessons from having good back-up processes in place.
- Navigated a few bespoke projects together discussing how they evolve along the way in unexpected ways.
- Helped Greg with some website configuration.
- Set the foundations of tracking time and materials - ie: costs.
2017-2019: Phase 2: revisiting systems
Following that initial few months, Greg took some time to bed in those systems. He learned what suited him and his clients. His business grew and that meant moving to a larger workshop and working with some freelancers regularly.
Crucially, although his business had grown, Greg’s own income hadn’t. This needed attention so we dug into what was going on and made changes accordingly.
We had spoken a few times over the intervening years, but now Greg was keen to have a steady pace of monthly meetings. He wanted to step back and explore what his ambitions were, and to have a healthy critique of the way projects flowed. Strategy and systems.
We spoke regularly and this fluctuated organically between the big picture and the everyday details. A few times we also met with his dad who had retired not long before from running a sizeable stationery business (turning over £21m). David is great with numbers and has a very level head.
2021-present: Phase 3: ad hoc chats
In recent years, we’ve spoken as and when it was helpful. Sometimes Greg has had a particular situation he’d like my perspective on, and at others we just have a good ‘natter’ about all things work. Sometimes it’s billable, and sometimes is a mutual, two-way conversation.
Greg has also become an avid user of Trifle for estimating and pricing projects. He’s found it to be a more reliable way to keep track of price versions and as a way of sharing with his team the time budgets he’s allowed for.
