CEO Secrets: from Ordsall Poverty to being A Billionaire

CEO Secrets: From Ordsall hardship to being a billionaire

24 November 2021

ByDougal Shaw
Business reporter, BBC News

Peter Done talks about his journey from a denied childhood in Salford in the north of England, to ending up being a self-made billionaire, for our business suggestions series CEO Secrets. He co-founded the wagering chain Betfred with his bro Fred Done in the late 1960s, before taking the yohaig code helm of HR company Peninsula, which he runs today in Manchester.

Peter Done has an abiding memory from his youth: a pillow being pushed in his face.

The culprit was Fred, his older bro by 4 years. He shared a bed with him until he was 15 in the household's two-up, two-down in Ordsall, referred to as the "slums of Salford". Their 2 sis oversleeped the room too.

"To this day I have claustrophobia from the pillow," laughs Done junior. "I was probably a bit saucy and he was larger than me."

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But it was the effective relationship with his brother that would be the key to his success in life. The brother or sisters discovered a path out of hardship by developing up an empire of wagering shops, generating themselves a billion-pound household fortune, making them a regular fixture on the Sunday Times Rich List, external.

Both Done bros left school at 15 with no certifications.

However, they found employment in a chain of wagering stores in Manchester. Like clubs, these facilities flourished in poor locations. They had actually just been legalised in the UK in 1961. There had been concerns about their social effect, along with the extremely morality of gambling.

Done was managing a betting shop at 17 although he legally couldn't go into the facilities.

The owner valued him for his skill at mathematics. He looked after the books, psychologically number crunching the stakes, earnings and losses.

In the late sixties these were daunting locations to work - never ever mind if you were simply a teenager. They were dominated by men and the decoration frequently resembled that of a jail. Things might turn violent, especially after 3pm on a Saturday when individuals spilled in from the pubs, Done recalls.

"You couldn't show weakness," he states, "because then these ruffians would recognise you were an easy touch."

Both Done and his sibling showed a flair for running these places and by the time Peter turned 21 in 1967, the two had their own store. They purchased it from a retired bookie for ₤ 4,000 - ₤ 1,000 of which was a deposit Peter Done had actually conserved up to purchase a house with his brand-new spouse.

He mored than happy to take this threat since he currently had six years experience in the organization behind him, and he always thought he might run a shop better than his managers, provided the possibility.

He had discovered lessons at 21, that he still values today.

The key thing is constantly client service, Done discusses, because that's what brings people back.

"We would call our clients 'Sir' and in them days that didn't take place.

"If a punter had a big win the bookie used to toss the cash at them and state, 'do not return once again!' whereas we 'd state, 'here's your money, enjoy it!'

"They were shocked. But we knew they 'd come back and with time the bookie always wins."

The siblings also did not like the reality that bookies' stores looked like "hovels".

"We upped our video game, we had carpets."

The formula proved effective and the bros gradually bought more shops, with the very first couple of run by their sisters, cementing the household organization. By the mid-1980s they had more than 70 Betfred stores.

But it was an event during this consistent growth that caused Peter Done leaving the betting world behind. The bros had to settle a case out of court with an employee at a brand-new store they were taking over.

They felt bruised by the process. This led them to buy a brand-new business that contracted out HR knowledge and covered legal fees on a subscription basis.

this promotion code ended up being Peninsula and Peter Done has been its CEO for 35 years now. Its newly-built head offices are a shiny glass skyscraper and control the Manchester skyline simply north of Victoria station.

Done's office neglects Ordsall, where he grew up. Peninsula has grown progressively over the years, and now has more than 3,000 employees, serving more than 100,000 companies internationally, 40,000 of them in the UK.

Recently, the business's client base has actually grown by more than 12% throughout the course of the pandemic, as organizations worldwide rushed to update their HR and safety policies, whether it's about working from home, social distancing or vaccination guidelines. In time, his profession gamble appears to have paid off.

However, in the mid-1980s, though business's future showed indications of promise, the chances on its success weren't clear cut, and the siblings needed to make a choice. Who would run it?

The choice about who must leave Betfred was decided in true gambler's style, according to Peter Done.

"Fred said let's toss a coin, I won it, and he said 'you go', before I could state anything," he remembers, with a smile.

So Peter Done left the running of Betfred to his senior brother, though he remains a major shareholder.

Was the departure about getting out of the shadow of his older brother, Fred, who's name, after all, was literally part of the service? Was it about taking a bet on himself?

"To start with, from the early days when he put the pillow over my head, that was it for domination, I might stick up for myself," states Done, quickly.

Was it then about a desire to leave behind the preconception of gaming, which blights many communities, and particularly, as research studies, external have shown, the type of denied areas in which he matured?

Done states that wasn't the case. "Betting gets a bad name, however the vast bulk of individuals who enter a betting store do it for fun and do it within their pocket."

Done's explanation for turning his back on betting shops is that he just chose the chances on the planet of HR insurance coverage and he relished the challenge of scaling a brand-new company.

However, he still utilizes the lessons he learned as a teenager in the betting stores despite the fact that his workplace nowadays might barely be more various, he says. Peninsula's multi-level workplaces are those of a normal call-centre, with banks of people talking on headsets. Everything is brilliant and glossy and the walls are covered with inspirational slogans. And there are carpets.

"It's everything about renewals and recurring income," explains Done, when it comes to the odds of the business's success. The customers registering to Peninsula are no various to punters in a 1960s betting store, because sense. Quality of service figures out if someone returns. And it's less expensive to renew a customer than to set up a new one.

A piece of company advice that Done has actually found out in recent years, however, is that you only achieve that good service at scale if you treat your staff members well and incentivize them - so he goes for high staff retention and makes it a policy to conspicuously reward those who bet9ja's welcome offer great service.

Among his own benefits for his organization success is having the ability to mix with individuals from Manchester United football club, a group he has supported since childhood. He is a regular at the Old Trafford stadium, together with his sibling, joining senior figures from the club, both previous and present.

One close pal is legendary supervisor Sir Alex Ferguson, who gave him some unforgettable guidance when they shared a drink on holiday a few years earlier, he says: "Keep control and make decisions, even if they are wrong. The worst thing is not to decide."

Peter Done feels his time in organization has followed those precepts, not least because his family have actually kept ownership - and for that reason control - of all business they have actually produced. And when it comes to decision-making, he waits the defining one of his profession, even if it was validated by the flip of a coin - by his bro.