As a young man Captain Stuart MacBride had dreams of living his life out on the sea.
But with a strong entrepreneurial passion inside him he always knew he wanted to earn enough money to own his own yacht, rather than sail it for someone else.
Now at the age of 77-years-old he heads up Aberdeen-headquartered International Medical Management (IMM), which has a turnover of £1.9 million and team of 36 staff.
The dad-of-three, who grew up in the Central Belt, first developed a love for sailing at the age of 13-years-old.
By the age of 15 he was one of the youngest qualified sailing instructors in Scotland.
Swapped sea for onshore life
But upon finding love he knew it wasn’t the life for him and he’d have to swallow the anchor and move onshore.
Stuart, dad to author Stuart famous for the Logan McRae series of Aberdeen-set grisly crime novels, said: “I loved my sailing but I found a young lady I was quite fond of and knew sailing wasn’t a long term thing.
“I had to find something else to do if I wanted that relationship to go anywhere.
“I spoke to a friend of the family who got me a job as a trainee and it would get me onshore properly and swallow the anchor.”
Move in to catering industry
Stuart entered the catering industry and joined Fropak in 1969 at the age of 22 as a trainee manager.
He spent two years there before being headhunted by General Foods and having to make the move to Aberdeen.
Stuart and wife Sheena moved to the Heathryfold area of the Granite City in 1971 with their two-year-old son Stuart and six-week-old twins Christopher and Scott.
As sales manager he covered the north of Scotland and spent four years with the company.
In 1975 he decided to make the move offshore and work for Scot Catering on the Forties Bravo platform in the North Sea.
He said: “It was an opportunity to do something different and the offshore wages were considerably higher than onshore.
“I started week on and week off which was horrendous. I was on call throughout and it was challenging.”
‘I think of myself as a serial entrepreneur’
When returning from offshore Stuart, who has been married to Sheena for 56 years, started consultancy work.
He said: “I worked within the offshore industry specialising in facility design, tender preparation on behalf of oil companies and tender evaluation.
“My major client was Marathon Oil based at Hill of Rubislaw whose building looks onto North Anderson Drive.
“I designed the top floor area which included the restaurant and lounge areas.
“After that I was involved in the design of the warehouse facilities in Peterhead.”
Stuart also spent some time working in Saudi Arabia to assist the general manager of Taysam a local camp and medical service support company.
But an opportunity arose in 1981 and Stuart became managing director for UK, Netherlands, Denmark and Norway for Sodexho, the French global catering conglomerate, until 1989.
He said: “It got me back to our home in Aberdeen.
“But I was travelling a lot. I enjoyed it but got to a point where I wanted to do something else.
“I think of myself a serial entrepreneur. You decide you want to do something on your own.”
Chance to start own business
In January 1990 he founded catering company Trinity International along with Ronan Petton and Keith Laddiman.
He said: “It was a real challenge starting from nothing.
“But it went incredibly well. It was wonderful fun.
“During that period we were asked to consider starting a medical business. The entrepreneurial spirit thought why not.
“It made sense to me. I thought how hard can it be.”
A short time later he formed a medical business called Emergency Medical Care Ltd.
Stuart said: “We set up an organisation and it went well with work mainly in Africa and South America.
“We were approached by French based AXA to sell them the company.
“As I put it at the time, ‘they came all the way to Aberdeen with a large cheque book and it would have been rude to say no’.”
Creation of IMM
Deciding they still had a desire to work in the medical industry Stuart decided to set up IMM with Dr Jean François Foucher and Dr Tarek K Y Mostafa in 2004.
The business provides a range of medical services for offshore and onshore industries.
He said: “We started with one member of staff and now got 36 including offshore workers.
“Our first year saw £700,000 turnover and we are now at £1.9m.
“We’ve survived three recessions and the last one was the worst.
“We are trying to stay just ahead of the business and never behind.
“It’s going in the right direction.”
IMM has won £3m worth of contracts so far this year and has plans to keep expanding staff numbers.
Stuart said: “It’s a good quality nucleus to keep expanding but we are not complacent.”
Conversation