CEO Secrets: From Ordsall poverty to being a billionaire
24 November 2021
ByDougal Shaw
Business press reporter, BBC News
Peter Done discusses his journey from a deprived youth in Salford in the north of England, to ending up being a self-made billionaire, for our service recommendations series CEO Secrets. He co-founded the betting 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 pushed in his face.
The perpetrator was Fred, his elder bro by four years. He shared a bed with him till he was 15 in the household's two-up, in Ordsall, referred to as the "shanty towns of Salford". Their 2 siblings slept in the space too.
"To this day I have claustrophobia from the pillow," laughs Done junior. "I was most likely 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 path out of hardship by constructing up an empire of wagering shops, generating themselves a billion-pound household fortune, making them a regular component on the Sunday Times Rich List, external.
Both Done brothers left school at 15 without any qualifications.
However, they found work in a chain of wagering shops in Manchester. Like bars, these establishments prospered in bad locations. They had actually just been legalised in the UK in 1961. There had been concerns about their social impact, along with the extremely morality of gaming.
Done was managing a wagering shop at 17 even though he legally could not enter the properties.
The owner valued him for his skill at maths. He cared for the books, mentally number crunching the stakes, revenues and losses.
In the late sixties these were daunting places to work - never ever mind if you were simply a teenager. They were dominated by guys and the decoration frequently looked like that of a jail. Things could turn violent, particularly after 3pm on a Saturday when people spilled in from the clubs, Done remembers.
"You could not reveal weak point," he says, "because then these ruffians would recognise you were an easy touch."
Both Done and his bro revealed a flair for running these locations and by the time Peter turned 21 in 1967, the 2 had their own shop. They bought it from a retired bookie for ₤ 4,000 - ₤ 1,000 of which was a deposit Peter Done had saved as much as buy a house with his new wife.
He enjoyed to take this risk due to the fact that he currently had 6 years experience in business behind him, and he always believed he could run a store better than his bosses, given the opportunity.
He had found out lessons at 21, that he still values today.
The essential 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 bookmaker used to toss the cash at them and say, 'do not come back again!' whereas we 'd state, 'here's your cash, enjoy it!'
"They were shocked. But we understood they 'd return and over time the bookie constantly wins."
The brothers also did not like the truth that bookmakers' shops appeared like "hovels".
"We upped our game, we had carpets."
The formula showed successful and the bros gradually purchased more stores, with the very 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 during this promotion code consistent growth that resulted in Peter Done leaving the betting world behind. The bros needed to settle a case out of court with a worker at a brand-new shop they were taking control of.
They felt bruised by the yohaig code procedure. this promotion code led them to purchase a brand-new organization that contracted out HR know-how and covered legal charges on a subscription basis.
This became Peninsula and Peter Done has actually been its CEO for 35 years now. Its newly-built head offices are a glossy glass skyscraper and dominate the Manchester skyline simply north of Victoria station.
Done's workplace 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 customer base has actually grown by more than 12% throughout the course of the pandemic, as companies all over the world scrambled to update their HR and security policies, whether it's about working from home, social distancing or vaccination rules. With time, his profession gamble appears to have actually paid off.
However, in the mid-1980s, though the business's future showed indications of pledge, the odds on its success weren't clear cut, and the bros needed to decide. Who would run it?
The decision about who needs to leave Betfred was decided in real gambler's style, according to Peter Done.
"Fred stated let's toss a coin, I won it, and he stated 'you go', before I could say anything," he recalls, with a smile.
So Peter Done left the running of Betfred to his elder sibling, though he remains a major investor.
Was the departure about stepping out of the shadow of his older sibling, 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 supremacy, I could stick up for myself," states Done, quickly.
Was it then about a desire to leave the preconception of gaming, which blights many neighborhoods, and particularly, as studies, external have revealed, the kind of deprived areas in which he matured?
Done states that wasn't the case. "Betting gets a bad name, however the large majority of people who enter a wagering shop do it for fun and do it within their pocket."
Done's explanation for turning his back on betting shops is that he simply chose the odds on the planet of HR insurance and he relished the difficulty of scaling a brand-new company.
However, he still uses the yohaig code lessons he discovered as a teenager in the betting stores even though his workplace these days might hardly be more different, he states. Peninsula's multi-level workplaces are those of a common call-centre, with banks of individuals chatting on headsets. Everything is bright and shiny and the walls are covered with motivational mottos. And there are carpets.
"It's everything about renewals and repeating income," discusses Done, when it comes to the chances of the company's success. The clients signing up to Peninsula are no different to punters in a 1960s betting shop, in that sense. Quality of service determines if somebody returns. And it's cheaper to renew a client than to set up a new one.
A piece of service guidance that Done has actually learned over the last few years, however, is that you only achieve that excellent service at scale if you treat your employees well and incentivize them - so he goes for high staff retention and makes it a policy to conspicuously reward those who offer great service.
Among his own rewards for his business success is being able to combine with people from Manchester United football club, a team he has supported considering that childhood. He is a regular at the Old Trafford arena, in addition to his bro, joining senior figures from the club, both past and present.
One close buddy is famous manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who offered him some unforgettable suggestions 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 business has actually followed those precepts, not least due to the fact that his family have kept ownership - and therefore control - of all the companies they have produced. And when it comes to decision-making, he waits the defining one of his career, even if it was justified by the flip of a coin - by his bro.
You can follow CEO Secrets reporter Dougal Shaw on Twitter: @dougalshawbbc, external
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