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CEO Secrets: From Ordsall hardship to being a billionaire

24 November 2021

ByDougal Shaw
Business press reporter, BBC News

Peter Done talks about his journey from a denied youth in Salford in the north of England, to ending up being a self-made billionaire, for our company guidance series CEO Secrets. He co-founded the wagering chain Betfred with his sibling 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 childhood: a pillow being pushed in his face.

The offender was Fred, his senior bro by 4 years. He shared a bed with him until he was 15 in the family's two-up, two-down in Ordsall, referred to as the "run-down neighborhoods of Salford". Their two sisters oversleeped the space too.

"To this promotion code day I have claustrophobia from the pillow," chuckles Done junior. "I was probably a bit cheeky and he was bigger than me."

But it was the effective relationship with his bro that would be the secret to his success in life. The brother or sisters found a path out of hardship by developing an empire of wagering stores, accumulating themselves a billion-pound family fortune, making them a routine fixture on the Sunday Times Rich List, external.

Both Done bros left school at 15 with no .

However, they discovered employment in a chain of betting shops in Manchester. Like bars, these facilities flourished in poor locations. They had actually just been legalised in the UK in 1961. There had actually been issues about their social impact, along with the extremely morality of gambling.

Done was managing a betting store at 17 although he lawfully couldn't enter the premises.

The owner valued him for his ability at maths. He looked after the books, mentally number crunching the stakes, revenues and losses.

In the late sixties these were frightening locations to work - never ever mind if you were simply a teenager. They were dominated by guys and the decoration often looked like that of a jail. Things could turn violent, especially after 3pm on a Saturday when individuals spilled in from the bars, Done recalls.

"You couldn't reveal weak point," he says, "since then these goons would acknowledge you were a simple touch."

Both Done and his brother revealed a style for running these places and by the time Peter turned 21 in 1967, the two had their own shop. They bought it from a retired bookmaker for ₤ 4,000 - ₤ 1,000 of which was a deposit Peter Done had saved as much as purchase a home with his new better half.

He enjoyed to take this risk because he already had 6 years experience in the company behind him, and he always believed he might run a store much better than his managers, offered the possibility.

He had actually found out lessons at 21, that he still values today.

The crucial thing is always customer service, Done describes, because that's what brings people back.

"We would call our consumers 'Sir' and in them days that didn't happen.

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

"They were shocked. But we understood they 'd return and over time the bookie constantly wins."

The bros likewise disliked the fact that bookies' stores looked like "hovels".

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

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

But it was an incident throughout this consistent expansion that caused Peter Done leaving the wagering world behind. The bros needed to settle a case out of court with an employee at a new shop they were taking control of.

They felt bruised by the process. This led them to invest in a new service that outsourced HR competence and covered legal fees on a subscription basis.

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

Done's workplace neglects Ordsall, where he grew up. Peninsula has grown progressively for many years, and now has more than 3,000 employees, serving more than 100,000 business worldwide, 40,000 of them in the UK.

Recently, the business's client base has grown by more than 12% throughout the course of the pandemic, as companies all over the world rushed to update their HR and safety policies, whether it has to do with working from home, social distancing or vaccination guidelines. In time, his career gamble appears to have actually settled.

However, in the mid-1980s, though the business's future revealed signs of pledge, the odds on its success weren't clear cut, and the siblings had to choose. Who would run it?

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

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

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

Was the departure about stepping out of the shadow of his older sibling, Fred, who's name, after all, was actually part of the 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," states Done, quickly.

Was it then about a desire to leave the stigma of betting, which blights lots of neighborhoods, and particularly, as research studies, external have shown, the kind of deprived areas in which he matured?

Done says that wasn't the case. "Betting gets a bad name, but the huge majority of people who enter a betting shop do it for enjoyable and do it within their pocket."

Done's explanation for turning his back on wagering stores is that he merely chose the odds worldwide of HR insurance coverage and he enjoyed the obstacle of scaling a brand-new company.

However, he still uses the lessons he found out as a teen in the betting shops although his location of work nowadays might barely be more different, he states. Peninsula's multi-level workplaces are those of a typical call-centre, with banks of people chatting on headsets. Everything is intense and glossy and the walls are covered with motivational mottos. And there are carpets.

"It's everything about renewals and recurring earnings," discusses Done, when it comes to the odds of business's success. The clients registering to Peninsula are no various to punters in a 1960s betting shop, because sense. Quality of service figures out if somebody comes back. And it's cheaper to renew a consumer than to set up a brand-new one.

A piece of company recommendations that Done has actually found out in the last few years, however, is that you only attain that great 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 provide great service.

Among his own rewards for his company success is having the ability to mix with people from Manchester United football club, a group he has supported considering that childhood. He is a routine at the Old Trafford stadium, together with his bro, mingling with senior figures from the club, both previous and present.

One close friend is legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who provided him some memorable recommendations when they shared a drink on vacation a few years ago, he says: "Keep control and make decisions, even if they are incorrect. The worst thing is not to make a decision."

Peter Done feels his time in organization has actually followed those precepts, not least due to the fact that his household have actually kept ownership - and therefore control - of all business they have actually produced. And when it comes to decision-making, he stands by the specifying among his career, 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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