Spring: The Season of business growth and prosperity — and my bloody back!

This spring has been as eventful as they come both personally and in business. In March, I had plenty of time for introspective thought, because I spent a week in the hospital recovering from back surgery. Recovery has been painful, but nothing compared to the agony I was in before.

While I was in the hospital bed, I didn’t neglect my business and spent a lot of time working. I have my Kindle Fire and mobile to thank for that.

My recovery continued at home and in the office, and now I feel excellent. I’ll say this:

Don’t let anybody tell you the NHS is rubbish.

I was looked after incredibly well by the amazing staff at the National Neurology and Neurosurgery hospital. I can’t think of a single bad note to make.

Spring is also exciting because it marks 13 years since I set up The Claims Desk.

I chose to quit my corporate job with a decent salary, pension and company car — a job I truly hated.

I set up business in the broom cupboard (literally) of a run down serviced office building with no natural light or ventilation, inhaling secondhand cigarette smoke all day.

That experience allowed us to scrape by on our own merit and build a property claims firm we’re truly proud of.

Our business has seen steady growth ever since. Our first quarter this year was the busiest ever in terms of new instructions. Fire, theft and flood claims from old and new clients in the residential and commercial property market have been pouring in.

We’re very proud of the fact that business has been growing steadily.

To further things, we’ve gone into partnership with Sarrani Ltd., a privately owned building repair network that enables us to offer a full project-managed, supervised and costed repair programme on all our building claims — all at zero cost to our clients.

It’s not just a perfect fit from a business standpoint.

Rachel Stockley, the founding Director of Sarrani, shares the same ethos we have at The Claims Desk. That ethos is
constructed around delivering superb service the first time, every time. We both live and breathe our jobs and hope our clients become raging fans and friends, as many of them do.

We’ve also taken on a senior loss assessor in our business, Debbie Palfrey, who has worked many years as a property insurance
loss adjustor. She’ll be incredibly useful, because her experience is in the profession we’re often at odds with. We
tell her she’s coming from the dark side into the light! Her professional style and culture are a perfect fit, and we’re
confident you will love Debbie — or Debs, as she likes to be called.

She’s here to help us achieve our vision, which is to be the first and only loss assessors anyone will want on their side, because they will know that we understand their plight. That’s all too often missed by insurance companies.

Everything feels on the up, but it would be difficult to feel pessimistic anyway with the days getting longer and warmer like they are. The ponds around here are full of frogspawn, and my wife, Soli, has filled our garden with colourful flowers.

Oh, and I nearly forgot — it’s birthday season at the Lazarus home! My wife Soli’s birthday is 26 April, my daughter, Rosie’s, is May 1st, mine is May 2nd, and my son, David’s, is on May 4th (known to many as Star Wars Day — ‘May the Fourth Be With You’.)

With all the gift-buying that goes on, it’s almost as expensive a season as Christmas 🙂

I hope you all had a happy Easter, Passover or anything else you celebrate.

I hope to speak to all of you very soon!