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 youth in Salford in the north of England, to becoming a self-made billionaire, for our company advice series CEO Secrets. He co-founded the yohaig code 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 culprit was Fred, his older sibling by four years. He shared a bed with him up until he was 15 in the family's two-up, two-down in Ordsall, known as the "run-down neighborhoods of Salford". Their 2 sis oversleeped the room too.

"To this promotion code 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 effective relationship with his bro that would be the secret to his success in life. The siblings found a path out of poverty by constructing up an empire of wagering stores, collecting themselves a billion-pound household fortune, making them a routine component on the Sunday Times Rich List, external.

Both Done siblings left school at 15 with no qualifications.

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

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

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 frightening locations to work - never mind if you were simply a teen. They were dominated by males and the decoration typically looked like that of a prison. Things could turn violent, especially after 3pm on a Saturday when individuals spilled in from the bars, Done recalls.

"You couldn't reveal weakness," he states, "due to the fact that then these difficult guys would recognise you were an easy touch."

Both Done and his sibling 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 bookie for ₤ 4,000 - ₤ 1,000 of which was a deposit Peter Done had actually saved up to buy a house with his brand-new better half.

He was pleased to take this promotion code danger because he already had six years experience in business behind him, and he constantly thought he could run a store much better than his employers, provided the possibility.

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

The essential thing is constantly client service, Done explains, 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 bookie utilized to toss the cash at them and state, 'do not return once again!' whereas we 'd state, 'here's your cash, enjoy it!'

"They were shocked. But we knew they 'd return and in time the bookie constantly wins."

the yohaig code brothers also disliked the truth that bookies' stores looked like "hovels".

"We upped our game, we had carpets."

The formula showed effective and the brothers gradually purchased more shops, with the first couple of run by their sis, cementing the household company. By the mid-1980s they had more than 70 Betfred shops.

But it was an event during this steady growth that caused Peter Done leaving the wagering world behind. The siblings 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 process. This led them to invest in a brand-new company that contracted out HR proficiency and covered legal fees on a subscription basis.

This became 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 dominate the Manchester skyline just north of Victoria station.

Done's workplace neglects Ordsall, where he matured. Peninsula has grown progressively throughout the 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 business's customer base has grown by more than 12% during the course of the pandemic, as companies around the globe scrambled to upgrade their HR and safety policies, whether it's about working from home, social distancing or vaccination guidelines. With time, his career gamble appears to have actually paid off.

However, in the mid-1980s, though business's future revealed signs of pledge, the chances on its success weren't clear cut, and the bros needed to make an option. Who would run it?

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

"Fred said let's toss a coin, I won it, and he said '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 remains a significant shareholder.

Was the departure about stepping out of the shadow of his older sibling, 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 domination, I could stick up for myself," says Done, quickly.

Was it then about a desire to leave the stigma of gambling, which blights numerous communities, and particularly, as 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 majority of people who go in a betting store 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 odds in the world of HR insurance and he delighted in the challenge of scaling a brand-new service.

However, he still uses the lessons he found out as a teen in the wagering stores although his place of work nowadays could hardly be more different, he states. Peninsula's multi-level offices are those of a normal call-centre, with banks of people chatting on headsets. Everything is brilliant and glossy and the walls are covered with inspirational mottos. And there are carpets.

"It's all about renewals and repeating income," explains Done, when it concerns the chances of the organization's success. The customers registering to Peninsula are no different to punters in a 1960s wagering store, in that sense. Quality of service identifies if somebody comes back. And it's more affordable to renew a customer than to set up a brand-new one.

A piece of business advice that Done has discovered in current years, however, is that you just achieve that good service at scale if you treat your staff members well and incentivize them - so he aims for high personnel retention and makes it a policy to notably reward those who provide great service.

One of his own benefits for his organization success is having the ability to blend with individuals from Manchester United football club, a team he has supported given that childhood. He is a routine at the Old Trafford stadium, along with his sibling, socializing with senior figures from the club, both past and present.

One friend is famous manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who gave him some unforgettable recommendations when they shared a drink on holiday a few years earlier, he says: "Keep control and make choices, even if they are wrong. The worst thing is not to make a decision."

Peter Done feels his time in organization has actually followed those precepts, not least due to the fact that his household have actually kept ownership - and for that reason control - of all the businesses they have produced. And when it comes to decision-making, he stands by the defining among his career, even if it was validated 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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