In October’s edition we chat with with Joby Clark, sales and project engineer at Cobo Tankers and Services.
“COMMUNICATION IS KEY TO GETTING IT RIGHT.”Joby Clark
Please give your career history in 25 words or fewer.
Sent to Germany aged 18 to gain experience with compressors – started in a workshop with hydraulic, electrics and pneumatics, then into sales via an engineering degree.
Describe yourself in 3 words.
Honest. Committed. Driven.
What were your childhood / early ambitions?
To be a pilot with the RAF.
Describe your dream job (if you weren’t doing this?)
Working outside with different sporting activities probably in the mountains (with a vineyard nearby), skiing, kayaks, walking, etc.
Share your top tips for business success.
Speak to your customers in person and on the phone – communication is key to getting it right.
What’s your most recent business achievement of note?
Putting Cobo Tankers on the UK map for supplying top quality rigid tankers.
Tell us your greatest fear.
Not seeing my daughters grow up.
Which is most important – ambition or talent?
Ambition.
What’s the best thing about your job?
The diversity: I will be selling tanks/ preparing specifications, driving through some lovely parts of the UK and Ireland, occasionally on the spanners and then, of course, the trips to Spain!
Which is the quality that you most admire?
Kindness.
What are you most likely to say?
Red or White?
What are you least likely to say?
It can’t be done.
Describe your perfect day.
Good breakfast with a good coffee and then a day of fresh powder on the slopes for a blue-sky day. Supper with the family (no arguing children) and a nice bottle of wine with a roaring fire.
Do you have a favourite sports team?
No favourite really, but I like to watch the England rugby internationals.
What’s the biggest challenge of our time?
The use of fossil fuels and replacing them with something else. I don’t think that battery is for everything and that we will still need a liquid fuel – it will be how quickly we can start to produce enough of the drop-in replacements.
Cheese or chocolate?
Cheese.
Share your greatest personal achievement.
My two daughters – with the help of my wife of course!
What’s your pet hate or biggest irritant?
Bureaucracy.
If you were on ‘Mastermind’ what would your specialist subject be?
Service stations of the UK – with my work for the last 20 years I think I’ve visited them all.
If you were elected to government what would be the first law you’d press for?
To find a way to promote the use of new fuels over ‘fossil fuels’ so that investment is encouraged in their development and volumes are increased. I think that, in the next few years, we will see synthetic fuels enter the market in a big way.
If your 20-year-old self saw you now what would they think?
Where’s the hair gone?!
What is number 1 on your bucket list?
To see the northern lights- it’s something I’ve been meaning to do for a while.
What 3 things would you take to a desert island?
An axe, a fishing rod and my family.
Tell us something about you that people would be very surprised by.
I am half German.
Who would you most like to ask these questions of?
Liz Truss – let’s see what she has in store for the country.
