CEO Secrets: From Ordsall poverty to being a billionaire

24 November 2021

ByDougal Shaw
Business reporter, BBC News

Peter Done talks about his journey from a deprived youth in Salford in the north of England, to becoming a self-made billionaire, for our service guidance 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 perpetrator was Fred, his older brother by four years. He shared a bed with him up until he was 15 in the household's two-up, two-down in Ordsall, understood as the "run-down neighborhoods of Salford". Their 2 sisters oversleeped the space too.

"To this day I have claustrophobia from the pillow," laughs Done junior. "I was most likely a bit cheeky and he was larger than me."

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

Both Done siblings left school at 15 without any certifications.

However, they found employment in a chain of betting shops in Manchester. Like clubs, these establishments grew in bad areas. They had just been legalised in the UK in 1961. There had actually been concerns about their social impact, along with the extremely morality of gaming.

Done was managing a wagering store at 17 although he lawfully couldn't get in the properties.

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

In the late sixties these were intimidating locations to work - never ever mind if you were just a teenager. They were dominated by males and the decoration typically resembled that of a jail. Things might turn violent, particularly after 3pm on a Saturday when people spilled in from the bars, Done recalls.

"You could not show weak point," he says, "because then these goons would recognise you were an easy touch."

Both Done and his bro showed a flair for running these places and by the time Peter turned 21 in 1967, the 2 had their own store. They purchased it from a retired bookie for ₤ 4,000 - ₤ 1,000 of which was a deposit Peter Done had actually saved as much as purchase a home with his new wife.

He was delighted to take this promotion code risk due to the fact that he currently had 6 years experience in business behind him, and he always thought he might run a shop much better than his managers, provided the chance.

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

The crucial thing is constantly customer care, Done describes, since that's what brings individuals 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 utilized to toss the money at them and state, 'do not come back once again!' whereas we 'd state, 'here's your cash, enjoy it!'

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

The siblings also did not like the fact that bookies' stores looked like "hovels".

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

The formula proved effective and the siblings slowly purchased more shops, with the first couple of run by their siblings, cementing the family organization. By the mid-1980s they had more than 70 Betfred shops.

But it was an event during this promotion code constant expansion that caused Peter Done leaving the betting world behind. The siblings had 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 process. this promotion code led them to buy a new organization that outsourced HR know-how and covered legal charges on a membership basis.

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

Done's office ignores Ordsall, where he matured. Peninsula has grown gradually throughout the years, and now has more than 3,000 employees, serving more than 100,000 companies worldwide, 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 organizations worldwide scrambled to upgrade their HR and safety policies, whether it's about working from home, social distancing or vaccination rules. Gradually, his career gamble appears to have actually settled.

However, in the mid-1980s, though business's future showed indications of promise, the odds on its success weren't clear cut, and the brothers had to decide. Who would run it?

The choice about who should leave Betfred was decided 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 state anything," he recalls, with a smile.

So Peter Done left the running of Betfred to his elder sibling, 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 literally part of business? 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 dominance, I might stick up for myself," says Done, quickly.

Was it then about a desire to leave behind the stigma of betting, which blights numerous communities, and specifically, as research studies, external have revealed, the type of denied areas in which he matured?

Done says that wasn't the case. "Betting gets a bad name, however the large bulk 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 betting stores is that he just preferred the chances worldwide of HR insurance coverage and he delighted in the difficulty of scaling a brand-new company.

However, he still uses the lessons he learned as a teen in the wagering stores although his workplace nowadays might barely be more various, he says. Peninsula's multi-level offices are those of a normal call-centre, with banks of people talking on headsets. Everything is bright and shiny and the walls are covered with motivational mottos. And there are carpets.

"It's all about renewals and repeating income," explains Done, when it concerns the odds of business's success. The customers signing up to Peninsula are no various to punters in a 1960s betting store, in that sense. Quality of service identifies if someone comes back. And it's cheaper to restore a consumer than to set up a brand-new one.

A piece of company advice that Done has actually learned over the last few years, however, is that you just attain that excellent service at scale if you treat your staff members well and incentivize them - so he goes for high personnel retention and makes it a policy to conspicuously reward those who give good service.

Among his own benefits for his business success is being able to combine with individuals from Manchester United football club, a group he has actually supported considering that childhood. He is a regular at the Old Trafford stadium, together with his bro, mingling with senior figures from the club, both past and present.

One friend is famous manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who provided him some unforgettable suggestions when they shared a beverage on holiday a couple of years earlier, he says: "Keep control and make decisions, even if they are incorrect. the yohaig code worst thing is not to decide."

Peter Done feels his time in service has followed those precepts, not least because his household have actually kept ownership - and for that reason control - of all the companies they have actually produced. And when it comes to decision-making, he stands by the specifying among his profession, even if it was validated by the flip of a coin - by his brother.

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

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