THE Apprentice winner Joseph Valente has bounced back from a “catastrophic” business fail to make a huge sum of money.
The flashy entrepreneur, 36, who began life as a plumber before launching his own business aged 24, is now in the trade growth game.
His firm Trade Mastermind Limited, which helps tradesmen scale their operations, has posted an impressive bottom line in its latest accounts filed to Companies House.
The business has £157k in cash, but is owed a cool £3.277m from debtors – almost triple the previous filing.
It also has a security blanket in the form of a profit and loss reserve of £1,005,496.
Joseph has never been short of confidence and at the weekend laid bare a bold ambition to become a billionaire by the age of 50.
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In a candid Facebook post, he said: “I made millions in my 20s and by 29, I’d lost it all.
“A meteoric rise building one of the fastest-growing businesses the construction industry had ever seen… followed by a catastrophic fall.”
Revealing how he bounced back from his business setback, he continued: “I went back to work harder than ever before seven days a week for five years starting from a laptop on a shoebox in my living room during lockdown. From that, I built what’s now become the world’s largest education business for trades.”
Joseph said he wants to have nine figures in cash no later than the age of 40, which he believes will set him on a path to make a billion in the decade that follows.
It would be a monumental change in fortunes following the collapse of his boiler installation firm ImpraGas in 2017, which reportedly racked up £2m in debt.
Initially, the company was a success, bringing in annual sales of more than £10m and employing more than 150 people.
But just three years after Lord Sugar sold his shares back to Joseph in 2017 – two years on from pumping in a £250k investment – Joseph was forced to sell the indebted firm to Rel Capital.
Earlier this year, Joseph reflected on how the BBC‘s Apprentice has changed from his series in 2015.
“Now, it’s ‘Love Island In Suits. In 2015, we weren’t allowed to use social media either while involved with the show. Now it’s a self-promotion free-for-all all.
“The more drama and attention, the more eyeballs. We live in a clickbait world, so scandals boost the ratings.
“What hasn’t changed is the stresses and strains on the contestants, which are carefully orchestrated and are even worse than you assume from the TV footage.”
