{"id":3307,"date":"2026-01-16T09:30:18","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T09:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/rutland-and-stamford\/?p=3307"},"modified":"2026-01-16T09:30:18","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T09:30:18","slug":"who-is-joseph-valente","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pridemagazines.co.uk\/rutland-and-stamford\/highlights\/who-is-joseph-valente\/01-2026","title":{"rendered":"Who is Joseph Valente?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What a difference a decade makes. At 15, expelled from school. At 25, taking the top job after an appearance on BBC One\u2019s Apprentice, and now, at 35, a seven figure success and founder of Trade Mastermind which launches its All Business Academy this quarter, broadening its remit beyond tradespeople<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ufeffIn 2015 and given just a few weeks notice, Joseph Valente told his team that he was taking a few weeks of leave. His aunt in Italy had fallen ill and Joseph was going to help out by running her goat farm for a bit. As stories go it was absurd… but absurd enough not to be questioned. In fact he had been chosen to take part in the 2015 series of The Apprentice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2005 Joseph was expelled from school. In 2015 he won BBC television\u2019s The Apprentice. And now, in 2025, he is thirty five years of age, a father, and the founder of Trade Mastermind, a business that has moved from one man\u2019s idea into something that has already pumped half a billion pounds into the economy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And now, he says, it\u2019s time to go beyond trades and offer the same service to other business sectors; retail, hospitality, estate agencies…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea of Trade Mastermind is so obvious that it\u2019s incredible that nobody has thought about it before. Tradespeople are essential. From good electricians, and plumbers to builders and roofers, the sector accounts for 14.1% of all business in the country. A\u2008tradesperson\u2019s job is learned at college, but they tend to be taught the trade itself, not how to go self-employed and thereafter grow their business from a one-man business to one with more staff, and by extension, more reach. For the consumer that\u2019s advantageous too. Growing the sector\u2019s business sole traders into larger firms means you\u2019re more likely to contact a local firm with better availability to one of several people working for them, instead of relying on the availability of a single person. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the business owner, growing the business successfully means better profitability and expansion, plus a better work\/life balance; being able to spread work around and being able to take holidays. And for the country as a whole, more tradespeople are needed if the country is to get anywhere close to achieving its ambitions to build more new houses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joseph was \u201cborn and raised in Peterborough,\u201d brought up in a \u201cworking-class family,\u201d and his mum \u201cworked three jobs to keep the family moving.\u201d From a young age, he said, he realised that if he wanted to achieve big things and get the life he imagined, it would be down to him. He would have to learn how to create success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI hated education as a young teenager. I saw no value in it,\u201d he told me, before turning the idea on its head with the line that now underpins everything he does. \u201cEducation, in success, the right education is absolutely everything.\u201d He is a big believer that \u201csuccess leaves clues,\u201d and that \u201cthere is a blueprint to everything.\u201d As he put it, \u201cyou do not have to reinvent the wheel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His entry point into business was as an apprentice in the truest sense. He says he went to work for a local plumber in Yaxley \u201cfor free for a year,\u201d with a deal; work for free, learn everything. \u201cBy the time I\u2019m 16, he puts me into college,\u201d Valente recalls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By 18, Joseph was a qualified plumber; at 19, a qualified gas engineer. And crucially, his motivation wasn\u2019t abstract ambition\u2014it was personal. \u201cI wanted to put my mum into retirement,\u201d he says. \u201cSo I needed to get out of employment and start a business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Joseph ultimately now offers is not training in how to fit a boiler or rewire a house – that provision already exists in the further education sector. Instead, he offers  training in how to run and grow a business. In Joseph\u2019s words, it is a blueprint for \u201chow to market, how to sell, how to hire, how to scale.\u201d The reason he keeps returning to that language is that he sees business as a learnable skill. He is not dismissive of hard work, but he is uncompromising about the limits of hard work without structure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is also clear that this problem is not unique to the trades. In his view, most small business owners start a business because they are good at the job, not because they are prepared for the roles that suddenly appear on their shoulders. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEverybody goes in because they are great at the job first and foremost,\u201d he said. A hairdresser starts a salon, an accountant starts a practice, a plumber starts a plumbing business, and then they find themselves stuck with responsibilities they have never been trained in. As Joseph put it, \u201cthey find themselves stuck with all of these new roles and responsibilities they have not got any experience in, they have not trained in.\u201d Being a good technician, he said, is completely different from being a managing director with broad business management skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trade Mastermind exists because Joseph lived that gap. He founded ImpraGas at 22, and what followed was rapid growth, from a one-man tradesperson to a business with a seven-figure turnover. And he did so not with tuition or coaching, but like any other business owner; by making mistakes and experiencing success. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He recognised the need for something like Trade Mastermind, but by that time he was already running a large business. Also, he\u2019d need a public profile to get the message out… something like, an appearance on TV.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Apprentice sits right in the middle of his story, and his explanation for why he did it is blunt, practical and revealing. \u201cMoney, attention and mentorship,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you want to grow a business, you need attention first. To accelerate growth you need cash flow. To be successful you need a good mentor. The Apprentice offered all three.\u201d At that time, he said, he had hit his ceiling. \u201cI was working seven days a week, 18 hours a day, and I had hit my ceiling,\u201d he told me. \u201cI had run out of minutes.\u201d He realised he needed a new operating system, something beyond sheer effort. He needed to learn to work smarter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he described the moment he decided to apply as if it were fate. \u201cI walked into my kitchen in January the 9th, 2015, and Lord Sugar\u2019s page came up, final call for The Apprentice,\u201d he said, and in that moment he believed it was a sign. He was 25 when he won, and the prize was an investment for ImpraGas. But he is clear about what changed afterwards. \u201cIt was The Apprentice that got me thinking like a CEO,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause I had a billionaire business partner for two years.\u201d Before that, he admitted, he was \u201crunning my business like a plumber,\u201d doing everything from his head with \u201cno organisation,\u201d just \u201cworking super, super hard.\u201d When I put it plainly and suggested he had been working hard rather than smart, he did not hesitate. \u201cYeah, absolutely spot on,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking back, he called the experience \u201cthe best thing that ever happened to me,\u201d and described it as \u201clife-changing.\u201d It was also a huge risk. He had to disappear for weeks while his company kept running. He handed the business over, gave up his phone and wallet, and could not tell anyone where he was going… hence is trip to \u2018a goat farm in the mountains, with no signal and no wifi.\u2019 Once filming began, he said, they lived in a bubble in London, working long days on unfamiliar tasks, with no access to the tools most of us rely on. He described it as intense and as a kind of compressed business education, pushing you across situations you would not normally choose, while every decision is scrutinised. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was camaraderie, there was pressure, and he did not pretend the competitive edge was ever far away. He spoke about the mindset he took into it, and it sounded much like the mindset he tries to teach. Focus on what you can control. Deliver something you can defend. Do not obsess over other people\u2019s mistakes. In his view, too many contestants spend their time pointing at others rather than building their own case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trade Mastermind began to form as an idea when Joseph reached 29 and had to sell part of ImpraGas and shut part of it down. He described the story of that company as half good and half bad. They scaled fast and achieved major success, but he also made mistakes. When he stepped away, he looked back and asked himself what he did right, what he did wrong, and what he would have changed if he had known then what he knows now. The answer was straightforward. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

You do not know what you do not know. He then asked himself how many other trade businesses were like him, tradespeople who started a business but never learned business. In his words, there was \u201cnothing like Trade Mastermind\u201d when he started, and he made it clear that if it had existed when he was building ImpraGas, he would have wanted it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trade Mastermind started modestly. \u201cThat business started in my apartment in March, in lockdown, on my coffee table with a shoebox and a laptop pitching to five people,\u201d he said. Five years later, he describes it again in big terms, calling it \u201cthe largest education provider for trades businesses in the world,\u201d with a team of nearly 70 people and almost 1,000 students on one year and three year programmes. The growth is extraordinary, but he speaks about it as a proof that the need was always there. Tradespeople were not short of ambition. They were short of a structured route.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I asked what the organisation offers now, he explained that it blends in-person events with structured training. They run around 30 events in Peterborough and have about 500 trades businesses coming through the door every month. The programme is designed to feel serious, and he called it \u201ca university-level education programme.\u201d The investment reflects that. Courses start from \u00a310,000 and go up to three year programmes that cost \u00a375,000. There is also a deliberate entry point. It is for established business owners and, he said, they need to be doing at least \u00a3100,000 a year in turnover. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe courses are not cheap,\u201d he told me, and people need money available to invest. For now Trade Mastermind does not offer their courses for startups, though he talked about a future route for people moving from employment to self-employment, precisely because that early stage is when the wrong habits harden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The people who come to them now, he told me, are often not young. Some are 25, but many are in their forties and fifties and have been working for ten or fifteen years. They have been grafting and working hard, yet cannot understand why they are not making money. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Joseph\u2019s view, the reason is simple. \u201cThey do not know their numbers,\u201d he said. They are busy, but they are not necessarily profitable, and they have never been shown a better framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He quoted Lord Sugar as the moment the message crystallised. \u201cIf you do not know your numbers, you do not know your business,\u201d he said, and he does not soften what follows. If you are stacking jobs and simply grafting from one to the next without understanding what the figures are telling you, then \u201cyou are a busy fool.\u201d It is harsh, but it is often a recognisable trait: a diary full of work can hide weak margin, poor pricing, sloppy systems and cash flow problems. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joseph believes most owners know deep down what needs to change, but they need confidence, guidance and education that is structured. Building a business is hard, he said, because the uncertainties pile up. Do you focus on marketing first? Do you hire your first person? What happens if work slows? What happens if cash flow dries up? Their programmes aim to turn those questions into a plan that people follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He also thinks the scale of the opportunity is huge. Construction includes hundreds of thousands of small businesses across trades, many one or two person operations, and many capped not by skill but by the absence of a business framework. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is why his programmes are called the Seven Figure Academies, including the Seven Figure Boiler Business Builder, the Seven Figure Solar and Renewables Business Builder, and the Seven Figure Construction Business Builder. Seven figures is not just a motivational headline, he insisted. It is a practical threshold. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At around a million pounds a year in turnover, with the right margin and cash flow, a business can pay the people it needs and buy the owner\u2019s time back. In his words, it means \u201cenough sales with enough margin and enough cash flow to be able to pay the people that they need to effectively get out of having to run the business.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He came back to the reason people start up in the first place. Most want \u201cmore freedom, more choices, more time and more money,\u201d he said, yet most self employed owners do not get those things. Instead, they become trapped as the owner operator who does everything. The route out, he believes, is scale, because scale allows delegation, systems and leadership. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you can make yourself redundant from the business, then you have a choice,\u201d he said. You can let it run and enjoy the profits, or you can sell it because it is no longer dependent on the owner. For some people, he told me, the goal is not to stay in the trade forever. Some want to move into property or new ventures, but before they get proper structure and performance into the business, exiting is not even something they imagine is possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joseph\u2019s ambition extends beyond trades, and that is where the next chapter begins. He spoke about education for all businesses and even about the country\u2019s approach to entrepreneurship. By the time he is 45, he told me, he wants to lead \u201cthe first ever department of entrepreneurship in the UK,\u201d and in that role he would want to make education \u201cfree for all businesses.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He even floated the idea that registering a limited company could involve passing a competency test, so people understand what they are getting into and have some grasp of marketing, sales, operations and finance. Too many people start businesses without knowledge, he argued, and basic insights from day one would make all the difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That big picture is now becoming a concrete plan. In 2026, he said, the business will expand beyond the trade sector and begin running sessions for all business from a new 20,000 square feet headquarters in Peterborough. The same challenges exist, after all, for a jobbing chef who dreams of opening a place of their own, because the admin, the accounts, HR, compliance and marketing become your job overnight. Joseph agreed, and he set a clear timeline. They will launch the All Business Academy in the first quarter of 2026, and he described it as imminent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Numbers matter to him, and he offered his own. He said they have had \u201c5,000 students\u201d through their programmes over the last five years, meaning thousands of business owners. On average, he claimed those businesses have grown \u201c370-percent,\u201d and he believes the work has driven a significant increase in revenue across the construction businesses they support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Towards the end of our conversation, I mentioned his Instagram and the lifestyle content, the cars and the pictures of yachts, and asked if he ever worries it comes across as showy. His answer was candid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat is what Instagram is for,\u201d he said. \u201cShowcasing success and lifestyle.\u201d But he also said he is changing how he showcases success as he gets older. Rather than \u201chere, look at me,\u201d he wants it to become \u201chere is what you can learn from me.\u201d He spoke about humility and understanding that \u201cat any minute you can lose it all.\u201d He said you have to be grateful, and that success can become an emotional rollercoaster if you let it. His aim now, he said, is to stay calm when things go well and calm when things go badly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fatherhood, he told me, is central to that calm. \u201cHaving a little boy, he is my number one focus,\u201d he said. He spoke about legacy, making sure his son has the things he never had and learns the things he never knew. His son is four years old, and when Joseph spoke about him, the tone softened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For all the language of scale, performance and ambition, the most human part of his story is still the simplest. A working class childhood. A mother working three jobs. A teenager who could not see himself in school. A young man determined to learn a trade, then determined to learn business, then determined to teach others what he had to teach himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What stays with you after speaking with Joseph is not just the television moment, but the clarity of his message. Being good at the job is not the same as being good at the business. The difference between the two is education, structure and the willingness to look at your numbers without flinching. \u201cSuccess leaves clues,\u201d he says. The question is whether you are prepared to follow them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joseph Valente is the founder of Trade Mastermind, which will be expanding its provision of business training in Q1 of 2026 with the launch of the All Business Academy. Joseph\u2019s autobiography, \u2018Expelled From The Classroom To Billionaire Boardroom\u2019 is available online at www.josephvalente.com or call 0330 058 7100.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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