About Chris G Jones | Business Owner in Shropshire

What I am doing now

I build and run businesses around problems that tend to be accepted for longer than they should be. A tax relief is not investigated. An enquiry comes in while someone is on site and gets forgotten. Important job information is split between WhatsApp, camera rolls and memory. A good conversation has no clear next step.

I am not interested in adding technology for the sake of it. I want to know what part of the job is slow, unreliable or unnecessarily dependent on one person, then decide whether there is a sensible way to change it. Sometimes that means software. Sometimes it means a clearer agreement, a better hand-off or a difficult conversation.

“The question I come back to is simple: if this went wrong tomorrow, who would be expected to sort it out?”

What I want the work to make possible

I take my children to school and usually collect them too. That is not something I leave to chance around the edges of a busy week. It is one of the reasons I care about how businesses are organised. Good work should not require everybody to be on call all the time or one person to rescue every loose end.

The businesses I am building now give me the chance to keep responsibility and control close together. That matters when you have made commitments to customers, employed people or asked someone to trust you with an important decision.

I received the Professional Services MD of the Year award at the SME Business Awards. I value it because it came from work that had to stand up commercially, not from a personal brand exercise.

See the businesses I am building Read what guides my decisions

Chris G Jones seated portrait — Business owner based in Shropshire.

The route here

The moments that changed how I look at work.

This is not a CV. It is the short version of the experiences I still draw on when I am deciding whether a business, deal or piece of software is worth pursuing.

01
I started organising work early
I was born in Wrexham and raised in Shrewsbury. At about thirteen, I had a paper round and realised I could make it work differently. I recruited other children to make deliveries while I organised the route and the money. It was small, but it gave me an early feel for what happens when somebody takes responsibility for the whole job rather than only their own part.
02
I walked into six dealerships
I wanted to get into the motor trade, but every advertised sales role asked for experience I did not yet have. So I put a suit on, took my CV into six dealerships and asked to speak to the person in charge. One Dealer Principal created a Junior Sales Executive role for me. By 21, I was a Business Manager and the youngest in a network of more than 75 dealerships. It taught me to prepare, ask directly and understand the commercial side of a decision.
03
Becoming a father changed the job I wanted
The motor trade gave me a lot, but it also came with long days and six-day weeks. When I became a father, I could see that the pattern did not fit the father I wanted to be. Leaving was not a grand statement about work-life balance. It was a decision about how I wanted my week to look in real life.
04
The Chamber gave me a wider view
At Shropshire Chamber of Commerce, I spent time with hundreds of businesses. Some needed more customers, some needed better cash flow and some were simply carrying habits that had outlived their usefulness. It made me curious about how businesses actually work. It also showed me that a good relationship is valuable, but you still need to be clear about what has been agreed and who owns the outcome.
05
I had an early go at building software
People Portal was an early video-CV employment idea. I took it to Westminster to present to MPs and it secured funding. It was a useful lesson in turning an observation into something people can see and discuss. It also taught me that an idea has to survive the work of building, selling and supporting it.
06
At Ace Supplies, the first job was to steady the business
At Ace Supplies, growth was not the first conversation I wanted to have. The immediate job was to stabilise the team and protect the revenue already there. That period reinforced something I still believe: before chasing the next opportunity, make sure the customers, people and commitments you already have are being looked after properly.
07
Reclaim Tax UK showed me the value of specialist work
Building Reclaim Tax UK meant getting close to a different kind of business problem. Good companies were often carrying out qualifying work without knowing a tax relief might be available. The business has supported more than 1,000 companies and recovered more than £100 million for clients. I was also honoured to receive Professional Services MD of the Year at the SME Business Awards. The figures matter, but the real point was always to do the work properly and explain it without making it sound easier than it is.
08
Selling a company taught me where responsibility can break down
After Reclaim Tax UK was acquired, the priorities changed. Some smaller clients and team members risked being left without the support that had been promised. I worked to keep serving those clients and to protect the people involved. I later bought the company back. It was a hard lesson in the difference between being responsible for a promise and having enough control to keep it.
09
I am building again with that in mind
Today I am involved in Reclaim Tax UK, Keystone AI, Keystone Site and Gain Momentum. They are different businesses, but each starts with an operating problem I have seen up close: missed enquiries, scattered job information, overlooked tax relief or conversations that are not followed through. I am interested in building things that make the next decision easier for the people doing the work.

The work now

The businesses come from different observations.

I am involved in each of these companies. The common thread is not a slogan. It is the kind of problem each one was created to take seriously.

Tax relief and incentives
Reclaim Tax UK
I built Reclaim Tax UK after seeing how often legitimate tax reliefs were left unexplored simply because nobody had the time or specialist knowledge to investigate them.
Read why I built it
AI and customer response
Keystone AI
Keystone AI came from a problem I kept seeing in trade businesses: a good enquiry arrives while somebody is on site, then the response depends on memory and spare time.
Read why I built it
Site-to-office operations
Keystone Site
Keystone Site started with a familiar construction problem: important job information disappears into WhatsApp messages, camera rolls and conversations that never reach the office.
Read why I built it
Relationship-led outreach
Gain Momentum
Gain Momentum is built around a simple observation: worthwhile conversations are easy to start and surprisingly easy to lose when follow-up lives across personal inboxes and memory.
Read why I built it