CEO Secrets: From Ordsall hardship to being a billionaire
24 November 2021
ByDougal Shaw
Business reporter, BBC News
Peter Done discusses his journey from a denied childhood in Salford in the north of England, to becoming a self-made billionaire, for our organization 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 company 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 older bro by 4 years. He shared a bed with him up until he was 15 in the family's two-up, two-down in Ordsall, understood as the "slums of Salford". Their 2 sis oversleeped the room too.
"To this 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 sibling that would be the key to his success in life. The siblings found a route out of hardship by developing an empire of wagering shops, amassing themselves a billion-pound family fortune, making them a routine fixture on the Sunday Times Rich List, external.
Both Done brothers left school at 15 with no qualifications.
However, they found work in a chain of betting shops in Manchester. Like bars, these establishments thrived in poor locations. They had only been legalised in the UK in 1961. There had been concerns about their social impact, in addition to the very morality of gaming.
Done was handling a wagering shop at 17 even though he lawfully couldn't go into the properties.
The owner valued him for his skill 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 mind if you were just a teen. They were controlled by males and the decoration frequently resembled that of a jail. Things could turn violent, specifically after 3pm on a Saturday when people spilled in from the bars, Done remembers.
"You couldn't show weak point," he says, "due to the fact that then these ruffians would acknowledge you were an easy touch."
Both Done and his sibling showed a style for running these locations and by the time Peter turned 21 in 1967, the two had their own store. They purchased it from a retired bookmaker for ₤ 4,000 - ₤ 1,000 of which was a deposit Peter Done had saved approximately purchase a house with his brand-new better half.
He was delighted to take this threat due to the fact that he currently had 6 years experience in business behind him, and he always thought he could run a store better than his bosses, provided the opportunity.
He had actually discovered lessons at 21, that he still values today.
The essential thing is always customer support, Done describes, since that's what brings individuals back.
"We would call our consumers 'Sir' and in them days that didn't happen.
"If a punter had a big win the bookie used to toss the money at them and say, 'don't return again!' whereas we 'd say, 'here's your cash, enjoy it!'
"They were shocked. But we understood they 'd come back and gradually the bookmaker constantly wins."
The bros also did not like the reality that bookies' stores looked like "hovels".
"We upped our video game, we had carpets."
The formula showed effective and the bros gradually purchased more stores, with the first few run by their sisters, cementing the family organization. By the mid-1980s they had more than 70 Betfred stores.
But it was an incident during this steady expansion that caused Peter Done leaving the betting world behind. The bros needed to settle a case out of court with a staff member at a brand-new store they were taking control of.
They felt bruised by the process. This led them to buy a new service that outsourced HR competence and covered legal costs on a membership basis.
This became Peninsula and Peter Done has actually been its CEO for 35 years now. Its newly-built headquarters are a glossy glass high-rise building and control the Manchester skyline simply north of Victoria station.
Done's office ignores Ordsall, where he matured. Peninsula has actually grown progressively throughout the years, and now has more than 3,000 staff members, serving more than 100,000 companies worldwide, 40,000 of them in the UK.
Recently, the company's client base has actually grown by more than 12% throughout the course of the pandemic, as companies all over the world scrambled to upgrade their HR and safety policies, whether it has to do with working from home, social distancing or vaccination guidelines. With time, his career gamble appears to have paid off.
However, in the mid-1980s, though business's future showed 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 should leave Betfred was chosen in real bettor's design, according to Peter Done.
"Fred stated let's toss a coin, I won it, and he stated 'you go', before I might say anything," he recalls, 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 stepping out of the shadow of his older bro, Fred, who's name, after all, was literally 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 supremacy, I might stick up for myself," states Done, quickly.
Was it then about a desire to leave behind the stigma of gaming, which blights lots of communities, and especially, as studies, external have shown, the kind of deprived areas in which he grew up?
Done says that wasn't the case. "Betting gets a bad name, but the huge bulk of people who go in a wagering store do it for fun and do it within their pocket."
Done's explanation for turning his back on betting shops is that he merely preferred the chances in the world of HR insurance coverage and he enjoyed the obstacle of scaling a new business.
However, he still uses the lessons he discovered as a teenager in the betting stores although his workplace these days might hardly be more various, he says. Peninsula's multi-level offices are those of a normal call-centre, with banks of individuals 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 earnings," discusses Done, when it pertains to the odds of business's success. The customers registering to Peninsula are no various to punters in a 1960s wagering store, because sense. Quality of service determines if somebody returns. And it's more affordable to restore a customer than to establish a brand-new one.
A piece of business advice that Done has actually found out in current years, though, is that you only achieve that good service at scale if you treat your employees well and incentivize them - so he intends for high personnel retention and makes it a policy to notably reward those who bet9ja's welcome offer good service.
Among his own rewards for his company success is having the ability to combine with people from Manchester United football club, a group he has actually supported since youth. He is a routine at the Old Trafford arena, along with his bro, socializing with senior figures from the club, both past and present.
One close good friend is famous manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who gave him some memorable suggestions when they shared a drink on vacation a few years ago, he states: "Keep control and make decisions, even if they are wrong. 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 actually kept ownership - and for that reason control - of all business they have actually developed. And when it comes to decision-making, he waits the defining among his profession, even if it was justified 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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