“When it comes to an insatiable appetite and passion for business, an infectious enthusiasm for life and a boundless energy and determination to achieve results, Gavin Woodhouse is a man who delivers.”
So says Gavin Woodhouse, a 41-year-old entrepreneur who lives in a country home in the rolling Yorkshire countryside just outside Halifax. His business interests include care homes, hotels, leisure facilities and student accommodation and he has been listed as a director 137 times with Companies House.
Woodhouse began his business career as a teenager cleaning cars. “I was always a clever little git that thought he knew something that they didn’t, and one day somebody said: ‘Put up or shut up’ and I sort of thought I’d better put my money where my mouth is,” he says.
“My first experience as an entrepreneur was maybe working within the car industry and just seeing that cars needed cleaning. It was just a simple supply and demand. Then I sort of realised that people would want to come and part exchange their cars with us – often the traders wouldn’t give them the best possible prices, so I then thought actually if I offered to sell your car for you from a location and get you more than you were being offered and yet I’d be able to make something off the top of that. That was my first experience of cleaning cars and selling cars was probably my first experience at a young age.”
His personal website reports how the business “was such a success that within two years he had helped create a multimillion-pound financial facility for the funding of vehicles to large independent financial advisory and accountancy groups across the globe”.
Woodhouse then moved into property development and raising funds to build care homes, buy hotels and – eventually – build the Afan Valley adventure resort.
His website also describes him as a “business mentor” and the advice on offer includes: five lessons you can learn from failure; how to optimise your decision making; simple strategies for overcoming procrastination; and how to improve your personal brand.
His career has allowed him to enjoy many of the trappings of a successful entrepreneur.
He lives in a 17th-century country house, which estate agents have described as a “magnificent Grade I-listed six-bedroom country residence with staff quarters … Over the years this has been home to eminent local businessmen and visited by prime ministers and dignitar[ies] … The hall stands in manicured gardens and grounds of approximately 4.8 acres”.
The driveway is adorned with a string of luxury cars – a Bentley, a Tesla, a Porsche and a Range Rover – while Woodhouse’s love of social media reveals his taste for pursuits such as skiing, skydiving and snorkelling with whale sharks.
