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CEO Secrets: From Ordsall hardship to being a billionaire

24 November 2021

ByDougal Shaw
Business reporter, BBC News

Peter Done speaks about his journey from a denied childhood in Salford in the north of England, to becoming a self-made billionaire, for our organization suggestions series CEO Secrets. He co-founded the wagering chain Betfred with his brother Fred Done in the late 1960s, before taking the 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 offender was Fred, his senior brother by four years. He shared a bed with him till he was 15 in the family's two-up, two-down in Ordsall, called the "shanty towns of Salford". Their 2 sis slept in the space 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."

But it was the effective relationship with his sibling that would be the secret to his success in life. The brother or sisters found a route out of hardship by developing an empire of wagering shops, generating themselves a billion-pound household fortune, making them a routine component on the Sunday Times Rich List, external.

Both Done bros left school at 15 without any certifications.

However, they discovered employment in a chain of wagering stores in Manchester. Like clubs, these facilities thrived in poor areas. They had only been legalised in the UK in 1961. There had been issues about their social impact, in addition to the very morality of betting.

Done was handling a betting shop at 17 although he legally 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 places to work - never ever mind if you were simply a teen. They were controlled by males and the yohaig code design often looked like that of a prison. Things might turn violent, particularly after 3pm on a Saturday when people spilled in from the clubs, Done remembers.

"You couldn't reveal weakness," he states, "since then these ruffians would acknowledge you were an easy touch."

Both Done and his bro revealed a style for running these places and by the time Peter turned 21 in 1967, the 2 had their own store. 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 partner.

He mored than happy to take this threat since he currently had 6 years experience in business behind him, and he always believed he could run a store much better than his employers, provided the chance.

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

The crucial thing is always customer support, Done describes, since 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 say, 'don't come back once again!' whereas we 'd state, 'here's your cash, enjoy it!'

"They were shocked. But we understood they 'd return and gradually the bookie always wins."

The bros likewise disliked the reality that bookmakers' stores looked like "hovels".

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

The formula proved successful and the bros slowly bought more stores, with the first couple of run by their siblings, cementing the household company. By the mid-1980s they had more than 70 Betfred stores.

But it was an occurrence throughout this consistent expansion that led to Peter Done leaving the wagering world behind. The brothers needed to settle a case out of court with a staff member at a new shop they were taking control of.

They felt bruised by the procedure. this promotion code led them to invest in a new organization that outsourced HR competence and covered legal costs on a subscription basis.

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

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

Recently, the company's client base has grown by more than 12% during the course of the pandemic, as businesses all over the world rushed to upgrade their HR and security policies, whether it has to do with working from home, social distancing or vaccination rules. In time, his profession gamble appears to have actually paid off.

However, in the mid-1980s, though the organization's future revealed signs of guarantee, the chances on its success weren't clear cut, and the siblings had to make a choice. Who would run it?

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

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

So Peter Done left the running of Betfred to his senior bro, though he stays a major 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?

"Firstly, 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 numerous communities, and especially, as research studies, external have revealed, the kind of denied areas in which he matured?

Done says that wasn't the case. "Betting gets a bad name, however the large bulk of individuals who go in a wagering store do it for fun and do it within their pocket."

Done's description for turning his back on wagering shops is that he merely chose the odds on the planet of HR insurance and he enjoyed the challenge of scaling a brand-new company.

However, he still uses the lessons he found out as a teen in the betting stores although his place of work nowadays might hardly be more different, he says. Peninsula's multi-level workplaces are those of a typical call-centre, with banks of individuals talking on headsets. Everything is brilliant and shiny and the walls are covered with motivational slogans. And there are carpets.

"It's all about renewals and recurring earnings," explains Done, when it concerns the chances of the service's success. The customers registering to Peninsula are no various to punters in a 1960s betting shop, in that sense. Quality of service figures out if somebody returns. And it's cheaper to renew a customer than to set up a new one.

A piece of company recommendations that Done has actually discovered recently, however, is that you just accomplish that good 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 provide excellent service.

One of his own benefits for his organization success is having the ability to blend with individuals from Manchester United football club, a group he has actually supported since childhood. He is a regular at the Old Trafford arena, in addition to his brother, joining senior figures from the club, both previous and present.

One buddy is legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who gave him some when they shared a drink on holiday a couple of years back, he states: "Keep control and make decisions, even if they are incorrect. The worst thing is not to decide."

Peter Done feels his time in service has actually followed those precepts, not least since his family have actually kept ownership - and therefore control - of all the businesses they have developed. And as for decision-making, he waits the specifying one of his career, even if it was validated by the flip of a coin - by his sibling.

You can follow CEO Secrets reporter Dougal Shaw on Twitter: @dougalshawbbc, external

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