CEO Secrets: From Ordsall hardship to being a billionaire

24 November 2021

ByDougal Shaw
Business press reporter, BBC News

Peter Done talks about his journey from a deprived youth in Salford in the yohaig code north of England, to becoming a self-made billionaire, for our business suggestions series CEO Secrets. He co-founded the wagering 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 childhood: a pillow being shoved in his face.

The culprit was Fred, his senior sibling by four years. He shared a bed with him up until he was 15 in the household's two-up, two-down in Ordsall, known as the "slums of Salford". Their two sisters slept in the room too.

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

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

Both Done bros left school at 15 without any certifications.

However, they found work in a chain of betting stores in Manchester. Like pubs, these establishments thrived in bad areas. They had actually just been legalised in the UK in 1961. There had actually been issues about their social effect, as well as the extremely morality of gaming.

Done was handling a wagering shop at 17 although he lawfully could not get in the premises.

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

In the late sixties these were daunting locations to work - never mind if you were just a teen. They were controlled by guys and the décor typically looked like that of a jail. Things might turn violent, specifically after 3pm on a Saturday when people spilled in from the clubs, Done remembers.

"You could not show weak point," he says, "since then these difficult guys would acknowledge you were a simple touch."

Both Done and his brother showed a flair for running these locations and by the time Peter turned 21 in 1967, the two had their own shop. They purchased it from a retired bookmaker for ₤ 4,000 - ₤ 1,000 of which was a deposit Peter Done had conserved up to purchase a house with his new partner.

He mored than happy to take this risk because he already had 6 years experience in the organization behind him, and he constantly thought he might run a shop much better than his managers, provided the chance.

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

The key thing is constantly client service, Done discusses, because that's what brings individuals back.

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

"If a punter had a big win the bookmaker utilized to throw the cash at them and state, 'don't come back once again!' whereas we 'd state, 'here's your cash, enjoy it!'

"They were stunned. But we understood they 'd return and with time the bookie constantly wins."

The bros likewise did not like the fact that bookmakers' shops appeared like "hovels".

"We upped our game, we had carpets."

The formula proved successful and the siblings slowly bought more stores, with the first few run by their siblings, cementing the household company. By the mid-1980s they had more than 70 Betfred stores.

But it was an incident during this constant expansion that resulted in Peter Done leaving the wagering world behind. The siblings had to settle a case out of court with a staff member at a new store they were taking over.

They felt bruised by the process. this promotion code led them to buy a brand-new company that contracted out HR know-how and covered legal charges on a membership basis.

this promotion code became Peninsula and Peter Done has been its CEO for 35 years now. Its newly-built headquarters are a glossy glass skyscraper and control the Manchester horizon simply north of Victoria station.

Done's workplace overlooks Ordsall, where he grew up. Peninsula has actually grown progressively over the years, and now has more than 3,000 employees, serving more than 100,000 companies globally, 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 around the world 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 paid off.

However, in the mid-1980s, though business's future showed indications of guarantee, the chances on its success weren't clear cut, and the bros needed to choose. Who would run it?

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

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

So Peter Done left the running of Betfred to his senior sibling, though he remains a significant 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?

"To start with, 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, rapidly.

Was it then about a desire to leave behind the stigma of gambling, which blights lots of communities, and especially, as research studies, external have shown, the sort of denied areas in which he matured?

Done states that wasn't the case. "Betting gets a bad name, however the large majority of individuals who go in a betting store do it for fun and do it within their pocket."

Done's description for turning his back on wagering shops is that he just chose the chances in the world of HR insurance coverage and he enjoyed the challenge of scaling a new service.

However, he still uses the lessons he discovered as a teen in the wagering shops even though his workplace nowadays could barely be more different, he states. Peninsula's multi-level workplaces 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 everything about renewals and repeating earnings," explains Done, when it comes to the odds of business's success. The clients registering to Peninsula are no various to punters in a 1960s wagering shop, in that sense. Quality of service figures out if someone comes back. And it's more affordable to renew a customer than to establish a brand-new one.

A piece of business recommendations that Done has actually found out in the last few years, though, is that you just accomplish that great service at scale if you treat your staff members well and incentivize them - so he intends for high personnel retention and makes it a policy to conspicuously reward those who give great service.

One of his own benefits for his business success is having the ability to combine with individuals from Manchester United football club, a team he has supported because youth. He is a routine at the Old Trafford arena, together with his brother, socializing with senior figures from the club, both previous and present.

One buddy is famous supervisor Sir Alex Ferguson, who offered him some remarkable guidance when they shared a beverage 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 service has actually followed those precepts, not least because his household have actually kept ownership - and therefore control - of all business they have actually produced. And when it comes to decision-making, he waits the defining among his career, even if it was validated 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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