CEO Secrets: From Ordsall poverty to being a billionaire
24 November 2021
ByDougal Shaw
Business press reporter, BBC News
Peter Done speaks about his journey from a deprived childhood in Salford in the north of England, to becoming a self-made billionaire, for our company guidance series CEO Secrets. He co-founded the betting chain Betfred with his brother Fred Done in the late 1960s, before taking the helm of HR firm Peninsula, which he runs today in Manchester.
Peter Done has an abiding memory from his youth: a pillow being shoved in his face.
The offender was Fred, his elder 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 "shanty towns of Salford". Their 2 siblings oversleeped the room too.
"To this day I have claustrophobia from the pillow," laughs Done junior. "I was probably a bit cheeky and he was bigger than me."
But it was the successful relationship with his bro that would be the secret to his success in life. The siblings found a route out of hardship by developing an empire of wagering stores, accumulating themselves a billion-pound household fortune, making them a regular fixture on the Sunday Times Rich List, external.
Both Done brothers left school at 15 without any qualifications.
However, they discovered employment in a chain of wagering shops in Manchester. Like pubs, these establishments thrived in bad areas. They had actually just been legalised in the UK in 1961. There had actually been issues about their social impact, as well as the yohaig code extremely morality of betting.
Done was managing a betting shop at 17 although he lawfully couldn't enter the facilities.
The owner valued him for his ability at mathematics. He cared for the books, psychologically number crunching the stakes, profits and losses.
In the late sixties these were intimidating locations to work - never mind if you were just a teenager. They were controlled by males and the decoration often looked like that of a jail. Things might turn violent, particularly after 3pm on a Saturday when people spilled in from the pubs, Done remembers.
"You could not reveal weakness," he states, "since then these difficult guys would acknowledge you were a simple touch."
Both Done and his bro showed a flair for running these places and by the time Peter turned 21 in 1967, the 2 had their own shop. They purchased it from a retired bookmaker for ₤ 4,000 - ₤ 1,000 of which was a deposit Peter Done had actually saved up to buy a home with his new partner.
He mored than happy to take this danger due to the fact that he already had 6 years experience in business behind him, and he constantly thought he could run a store better than his employers, given the opportunity.
He had found out lessons at 21, that he still values today.
The essential thing is always client service, Done explains, because that's what brings people back.
"We would call our customers '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, 'don't come back once again!' whereas we 'd state, 'here's your cash, enjoy it!'
"They were stunned. But we understood they 'd come back and in time the bookie constantly wins."
The brothers likewise disliked the fact that bookmakers' shops looked like "hovels".
"We upped our video game, we had carpets."
the yohaig code formula showed effective and the brothers gradually purchased more shops, with the first couple of run by their sisters, cementing the family service. By the mid-1980s they had more than 70 Betfred shops.
But it was an event throughout this consistent growth that resulted in Peter Done leaving the wagering world behind. The brothers needed to settle a case out of court with a worker at a brand-new store they were taking over.
They felt bruised by the process. This led them to purchase a new service that contracted out HR knowledge and covered legal costs on a subscription basis.
This became Peninsula and Peter Done has actually been its CEO for 35 years now. Its newly-built headquarters are a glossy glass skyscraper and control the Manchester skyline simply north of Victoria station.
Done's office overlooks Ordsall, where he matured. Peninsula has grown gradually for many years, and now has more than 3,000 workers, serving more than 100,000 business globally, 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 around the world rushed to upgrade their HR and safety policies, whether it's about working from home, social distancing or vaccination guidelines. Over time, his profession gamble appears to have actually settled.
However, in the mid-1980s, though the business's future revealed signs of promise, the odds on its success weren't clear cut, and the brothers had to choose. Who would run it?
The choice about who must leave Betfred was decided in real bettor's style, according to Peter Done.
"Fred said let's toss a coin, I won it, and he stated 'you go', before I could state anything," he remembers, with a smile.
So Peter Done left the running of Betfred to his older bro, though he stays a significant investor.
Was the departure about getting out of the shadow of his older brother, Fred, who's name, after all, was actually part of business? Was it about taking a bet on himself?
"First off, from the early days when he put the pillow over my head, that was it for domination, I might stick up for myself," says Done, quickly.
Was it then about a desire to leave the preconception of gambling, which blights numerous neighborhoods, and specifically, as studies, external have revealed, the sort of deprived locations in which he matured?
Done states that wasn't the case. "Betting gets a bad name, but the huge bulk of individuals who enter a wagering store do it for enjoyable and do it within their pocket."
Done's explanation for turning his back on wagering shops is that he simply chose the chances on the planet of HR insurance and he relished the obstacle of scaling a new company.
However, he still uses the lessons he found out as a teenager in the wagering shops although his workplace these days could barely be more different, he says. Peninsula's multi-level offices are those of a normal call-centre, with banks of people talking on headsets. Everything is bright and shiny and the walls are covered with motivational slogans. And there are carpets.
"It's all about renewals and recurring earnings," discusses Done, when it concerns the odds of business's success. The customers registering to Peninsula are no various to punters in a 1960s wagering shop, because sense. Quality of service figures out if somebody returns. And it's cheaper to renew a consumer than to establish a brand-new one.
A piece of company guidance that Done has found out in the last few years, however, is that you only achieve that great service at scale if you treat your workers well and incentivize them - so he intends for high personnel retention and makes it a policy to notably reward those who give excellent service.
Among his own benefits for his service success is being able to blend with people from Manchester United football club, a group he has actually supported considering that childhood. He is a routine at the Old Trafford arena, together with his sibling, mingling with senior figures from the club, both previous and present.
One close buddy is legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who offered him some memorable guidance when they shared a drink on holiday a couple of years ago, 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 company has actually followed those precepts, not least since his household have kept ownership - and therefore control - of all business they have created. And when it comes to decision-making, he waits the specifying one of his profession, even if it was justified by the flip of a coin - by his sibling.
You can follow CEO Secrets press reporter Dougal Shaw on Twitter: @dougalshawbbc, external
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