CEO Secrets: From Ordsall poverty to being a billionaire

24 November 2021

ByDougal Shaw
Business reporter, BBC News

Peter Done discusses his journey from a denied youth in Salford in the north of England, to becoming 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 youth: a pillow being shoved in his face.

The perpetrator was Fred, his senior bro by four years. He shared a bed with him until he was 15 in the family's two-up, two-down in Ordsall, called the "run-down neighborhoods of Salford". Their two sisters slept in the room too.

"To this promotion code day I have claustrophobia from the pillow," chuckles Done junior. "I was probably a bit cheeky and he was larger 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 discovered a route out of hardship by developing an empire of betting stores, generating themselves a billion-pound family fortune, making them a regular component on the Sunday Times Rich List, external.

Both Done brothers left school at 15 with no qualifications.

However, they found employment in a chain of betting shops in Manchester. Like bars, these facilities prospered in poor areas. They had actually 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 wagering shop at 17 even though he lawfully could not go into the facilities.

The owner valued him for his skill at maths. He cared for the books, psychologically number crunching the stakes, revenues and losses.

In the late sixties these were daunting places to work - never ever mind if you were just a teen. They were controlled by men and the décor frequently looked like that of a jail. Things might turn violent, particularly after 3pm on a Saturday when individuals spilled in from the clubs, Done remembers.

"You could not reveal weak point," he states, "because then these ruffians would recognise you were an easy touch."

Both Done and his brother revealed a style for running these locations 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 actually conserved approximately buy a home with his new spouse.

He enjoyed to take this promotion code risk since he currently had 6 years experience in the company behind him, and he always thought he could run a shop much better than his bosses, given the opportunity.

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

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

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

"If a punter had a big win the bookie used to throw the money at them and state, 'don't return once again!' whereas we 'd say, 'here's your money, enjoy it!'

"They were stunned. But we understood they 'd return and over time the bookmaker always wins."

The siblings likewise did not like the truth that bookies' shops appeared like "hovels".

"We upped our game, we had carpets."

The formula proved successful and the brothers slowly bought more shops, with the very first couple of run by their siblings, sealing the household business. By the mid-1980s they had more than 70 Betfred stores.

But it was an event throughout this consistent expansion that led to Peter Done leaving the betting world behind. The bros had to settle a case out of court with a staff member at a brand-new shop they were taking over.

They felt bruised by the procedure. this promotion code led them to buy a brand-new company that contracted out HR expertise and covered legal costs on a subscription basis.

This became Peninsula and Peter Done has been its CEO for 35 years now. Its newly-built head offices are a shiny glass skyscraper and dominate the Manchester skyline simply north of Victoria station.

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

Recently, the yohaig code business's client base has actually grown by more than 12% during the course of the pandemic, as organizations worldwide rushed to update their HR and security policies, whether it has to do with working from home, social distancing or vaccination guidelines. Over time, his profession gamble appears to have settled.

However, in the mid-1980s, though the business's future showed signs of guarantee, 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 true gambler's style, according to Peter Done.

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

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

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

"First of all, from the early days when he put the pillow over my head, that was it for supremacy, I could stick up for myself," says Done, quickly.

Was it then about a desire to leave behind the stigma of gambling, which blights many neighborhoods, and specifically, as studies, external have shown, the kind of deprived locations in which he matured?

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

Done's description for turning his back on betting shops is that he just chose the chances on the planet of HR insurance coverage and he enjoyed the difficulty of scaling a brand-new organization.

However, he still uses the lessons he discovered as a teen in the wagering stores although his workplace these days might barely be more different, he states. Peninsula's multi-level offices 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 all about renewals and repeating income," explains Done, when it pertains to the chances of business's success. The clients signing up to Peninsula are no various to punters in a 1960s wagering shop, in that sense. Quality of service determines if somebody comes back. And it's cheaper to renew a customer than to establish a new one.

A piece of business advice that Done has actually discovered recently, however, is that you just achieve that excellent service at scale if you treat your workers well and incentivize them - so he aims for high staff retention and makes it a policy to conspicuously reward those who give excellent service.

Among his own benefits for his organization success is being able to mix 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 bro, socializing with senior figures from the club, both previous and present.

One friend is famous manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who gave him some remarkable guidance when they shared a beverage on vacation a few years ago, he states: "Keep control and make choices, even if they are wrong. 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 kept ownership - and therefore control - of all the services they have actually developed. And when it comes to decision-making, he stands by the defining among his career, even if it was justified by the flip of a coin - by his bro.

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

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