CEO Secrets: From Ordsall poverty to being a billionaire

24 November 2021

ByDougal Shaw
Business reporter, BBC News

Peter Done speaks about his journey from a denied childhood in Salford in the north of England, to becoming a self-made billionaire, for our company guidance series CEO Secrets. He co-founded the betting chain Betfred with his brother Fred Done in the late 1960s, before taking the yohaig code 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 offender was Fred, his elder sibling by 4 years. He shared a bed with him up until he was 15 in the family's two-up, two-down in Ordsall, called the "shanty towns of Salford". Their 2 sis slept in the room too.

"To this day I have claustrophobia from the pillow," laughs Done junior. "I was probably a bit saucy and he was bigger than me."

But it was the successful relationship with his bro that would be the secret to his success in life. The brother or sisters discovered a route out of poverty by developing an empire of betting stores, accumulating themselves a billion-pound family fortune, making them a routine fixture 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 stores in Manchester. Like pubs, these facilities grew in bad locations. They had actually only been legalised in the UK in 1961. There had actually been concerns about their social effect, along with the really morality of gaming.

Done was managing a betting store at 17 even though he lawfully couldn't get in the facilities.

The owner valued him for his ability at maths. He took care of the books, psychologically number crunching the stakes, earnings and losses.

In the late sixties these were daunting places to work - never mind if you were simply a teen. They were controlled by males and the design typically looked like 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 weakness," he states, "due to the fact that then these difficult guys would identify you were a simple 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 bookie for ₤ 4,000 - ₤ 1,000 of which was a deposit Peter Done had actually conserved as much as buy a house with his new better half.

He enjoyed to take this promotion code threat due to the fact that he currently had 6 years experience in the organization behind him, and he constantly believed he could run a store better than his employers, provided the opportunity.

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

The key thing is always client service, Done describes, because that's what brings people back.

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

"If a punter had a big win the bookmaker used to toss the money at them and say, 'do not come back once again!' whereas we 'd say, 'here's your money, enjoy it!'

"They were shocked. But we understood they 'd come back and with time the bookmaker constantly wins."

The siblings also did not like the truth that bookmakers' shops appeared like "hovels".

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

The formula proved successful and the siblings slowly purchased more shops, with the very first few run by their siblings, sealing the household service. By the mid-1980s they had more than 70 Betfred stores.

But it was an event during this consistent growth that caused Peter Done leaving the betting world behind. The bros had to settle a case out of court with an employee at a brand-new store they were taking over.

They felt bruised by the procedure. This led them to invest in a new business that contracted out HR know-how and covered legal costs 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 shiny glass high-rise building and control the Manchester skyline simply north of Victoria station.

Done's workplace overlooks Ordsall, where he matured. Peninsula has actually grown progressively for many years, and now has more than 3,000 employees, serving more than 100,000 business worldwide, 40,000 of them in the UK.

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

However, in the mid-1980s, though the organization's future revealed indications of pledge, 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 true gambler's style, according to Peter Done.

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

So Peter Done left the running of Betfred to his older brother, though he remains a significant investor.

Was the departure about getting out of the shadow of his older brother, Fred, who's name, after all, was actually part of the organization? 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, rapidly.

Was it then about a desire to leave the preconception of gaming, which blights lots of neighborhoods, and specifically, as research studies, external have shown, the sort of deprived locations in which he matured?

Done says that wasn't the case. "Betting gets a bad name, however the vast bulk of individuals who enter a wagering store do it for fun and do it within their pocket."

Done's explanation for turning his back on wagering stores is that he simply preferred the odds worldwide of HR insurance and he relished the obstacle of scaling a brand-new company.

However, he still uses the lessons he discovered as a teenager in the betting stores even though his place of work nowadays might barely be more various, he says. Peninsula's multi-level offices are those of a common call-centre, with banks of people talking on headsets. Everything is brilliant and shiny and the walls are covered with motivational mottos. And there are carpets.

"It's all about renewals and repeating earnings," discusses Done, when it comes to the chances of business's success. The clients signing up to Peninsula are no different to punters in a 1960s wagering shop, because sense. Quality of service identifies if somebody returns. And it's less expensive to restore a client than to set up a brand-new one.

A piece of organization guidance that Done has learned in the last few years, however, is that you only attain that great service at scale if you treat your employees well and incentivize them - so he aims for high staff retention and makes it a policy to notably reward those who give excellent service.

Among his own benefits for his service success is being able to blend with individuals from Manchester United football club, a group he has actually supported given that childhood. He is a regular at the Old Trafford arena, together with his sibling, joining senior figures from the club, both previous and present.

One friend is famous manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who offered him some unforgettable recommendations when they shared a beverage on holiday a few years ago, he states: "Keep control and make decisions, even if they are wrong. The worst thing is not to make a choice."

Peter Done feels his time in organization has followed those precepts, not least due to the fact that his household have actually kept ownership - and therefore control - of all the businesses they have produced. And as for decision-making, he waits the specifying one of his profession, even if it was validated 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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