CEO Secrets: From Ordsall hardship to being a billionaire
24 November 2021
ByDougal Shaw
Business press reporter, BBC News
Peter Done speaks 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 betting chain Betfred with his bro 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 brother by 4 years. He shared a bed with him till he was 15 in the household's two-up, two-down in Ordsall, referred to as the "shanty towns of Salford". Their two sisters 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 larger than me."
But it was the successful relationship with his brother that would be the secret to his success in life. The siblings discovered a path out of hardship by developing an empire of betting stores, accumulating themselves a billion-pound family fortune, making them a regular fixture on the Sunday Times Rich List, external.
Both Done brothers left school at 15 with no certifications.
However, they found work in a chain of betting shops in Manchester. Like pubs, these facilities thrived in poor areas. They had just been legalised in the UK in 1961. There had been concerns about their social effect, as well as the really morality of gaming.
Done was managing a betting shop at 17 despite the fact that he legally couldn't go into the facilities.
The owner valued him for his ability at mathematics. He took care of the books, mentally number crunching the stakes, profits and losses.
In the late sixties these were daunting locations to work - never ever mind if you were simply a teenager. They were controlled by men and the design typically looked like that of a prison. Things might turn violent, particularly after 3pm on a Saturday when individuals spilled in from the bars, Done recalls.
"You could not reveal weak point," he states, "because then these hard guys would recognise you were a simple touch."
Both Done and his bro revealed a flair for running these locations 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 conserved approximately buy a house with his new other half.
He enjoyed to take this danger due to the fact that he already had 6 years experience in the service behind him, and he always believed he might run a store much better than his managers, offered the chance.
He had learned lessons at 21, that he still values today.
The key thing is always customer care, Done discusses, 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 bookie used to throw the cash at them and state, 'don't return once again!' whereas we 'd state, 'here's your cash, enjoy it!'
"They were shocked. But we understood they 'd come back and gradually the bookie constantly wins."
The bros likewise disliked the truth that bookies' shops appeared like "hovels".
"We upped our game, we had carpets."
The formula showed effective and the bros gradually bought more stores, with the first few run by their siblings, sealing the family service. By the mid-1980s they had more than 70 Betfred shops.
But it was an event during this steady expansion that resulted in Peter Done leaving the betting world behind. The brothers needed to settle a case out of court with a staff member at a brand-new shop they were taking control of.
They felt bruised by the process. this promotion code led them to purchase a new service that contracted out HR know-how and covered legal charges on a subscription basis.
This became Peninsula and Peter Done has been its CEO for 35 years now. Its newly-built head offices are a shiny glass high-rise building and control the Manchester horizon simply north of Victoria station.
Done's workplace overlooks Ordsall, where he grew up. Peninsula has grown steadily over the yohaig code years, and now has more than 3,000 staff members, serving more than 100,000 business 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 businesses worldwide scrambled to update their HR and security policies, whether it's about working from home, social distancing or vaccination guidelines. Gradually, his profession gamble appears to have settled.
However, in the mid-1980s, though business's future revealed indications of pledge, the chances on its success weren't clear cut, and the siblings had to make a choice. Who would run it?
The choice about who needs to leave Betfred was chosen in true gambler's design, according to Peter Done.
"Fred stated let's toss a coin, I won it, and he said 'you go', before I could say anything," he recalls, with a smile.
So Peter Done left the running of Betfred to his senior brother, though he remains a major shareholder.
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?
"Firstly, from the early days when he put the pillow over my head, that was it for domination, I could stick up for myself," states Done, rapidly.
Was it then about a desire to leave the stigma of betting, which blights many communities, and especially, as studies, external have shown, the sort of denied locations in which he matured?
Done states that wasn't the case. "Betting gets a bad name, however the vast majority of individuals 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 stores is that he just chose the chances in the world of HR insurance coverage and he relished the challenge of scaling a new business.
However, he still uses the lessons he found out as a teen in the wagering stores although his workplace nowadays could hardly be more various, he states. Peninsula's multi-level workplaces are those of a common call-centre, with banks of individuals chatting on headsets. Everything is bright and shiny and the walls are covered with inspirational slogans. And there are carpets.
"It's everything about renewals and recurring earnings," describes Done, when it comes to the chances of the business's success. The clients signing up to Peninsula are no different to punters in a 1960s betting shop, because sense. Quality of service determines if someone comes back. And it's cheaper to restore a customer than to establish a brand-new one.
A piece of business guidance that Done has discovered recently, though, is that you just attain that good service at scale if you treat your workers well and incentivize them - so he aims for high staff retention and makes it a policy to conspicuously reward those who provide excellent service.
Among his own benefits for his business success is having the ability to blend with people from Manchester United football club, a group he has supported since youth. He is a routine at the Old Trafford stadium, together with his bro, joining senior figures from the club, both previous and present.
One friend is famous supervisor Sir Alex Ferguson, who gave him some remarkable advice when they shared a beverage on vacation a couple of years earlier, he states: "Keep control and make decisions, even if they are incorrect. The worst thing is not to make a decision."
Peter Done feels his time in business has actually followed those precepts, not least due to the fact that his household have kept ownership - and for that reason control - of all the companies they have created. And as for decision-making, he stands by the defining among his career, 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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