CEO Secrets: From Ordsall hardship to being a billionaire

24 November 2021

ByDougal Shaw
Business reporter, BBC News

Peter Done speaks about his journey from a denied youth in Salford in the north of England, to ending up being a self-made billionaire, for our business guidance series CEO Secrets. He co-founded the betting 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 shoved in his face.

The offender was Fred, his senior bro by 4 years. He shared a bed with him up until he was 15 in the household's two-up, two-down in Ordsall, referred to as the "run-down neighborhoods of Salford". Their two sisters slept in the space too.

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

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

Both Done siblings left school at 15 with no certifications.

However, they found work in a chain of betting shops in Manchester. Like bars, these establishments grew in bad locations. They had just been legalised in the UK in 1961. There had been issues about their social effect, in addition to the very morality of betting.

Done was handling a wagering store at 17 despite the fact that he lawfully couldn't enter the properties.

The owner valued him for his skill at mathematics. He took care of the books, psychologically number crunching the stakes, revenues and losses.

In the late sixties these were intimidating places to work - never ever mind if you were simply a teen. They were dominated by guys and the décor typically looked like that of a prison. Things might turn violent, particularly after 3pm on a Saturday when individuals spilled in from the pubs, Done remembers.

"You could not show weak point," he states, "because then these ruffians would recognise you were a simple touch."

Both Done and his bro revealed a style 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 as much as purchase a house with his new spouse.

He was delighted to take this danger due to the fact that he already had six years experience in the organization behind him, and he constantly believed he could run a store better than his employers, given the chance.

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

The crucial thing is always client service, Done discusses, since that's what brings people back.

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

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

"They were stunned. But we understood they 'd come back and in time the bookmaker always wins."

The brothers likewise disliked the truth that bookmakers' shops appeared like "hovels".

"We upped our game, we had carpets."

The formula showed effective and the brothers slowly purchased more shops, with the very first few run by their sisters, sealing the family service. By the mid-1980s they had more than 70 Betfred stores.

But it was an incident throughout this stable growth that resulted in Peter Done leaving the betting world behind. The siblings needed to settle a case out of court with a staff member at a new store they were taking control of.

They felt bruised by the process. This led them to invest in a brand-new business that outsourced HR knowledge and covered legal fees on a membership basis.

This 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 just north of Victoria station.

Done's workplace overlooks Ordsall, where he grew up. Peninsula has grown steadily for many years, and now has more than 3,000 staff members, serving more than 100,000 business internationally, 40,000 of them in the UK.

Recently, the company's client base has actually grown by more than 12% during the course of the pandemic, as services around the world rushed to upgrade their HR and security policies, whether it's about working from home, social distancing or vaccination rules. Over time, his career gamble appears to have paid off.

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

The choice about who must leave Betfred was chosen in real gambler's style, according to Peter Done.

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

So Peter Done left the running of Betfred to his senior sibling, though he stays a major investor.

Was the departure about stepping out of the shadow of his older brother, Fred, who's name, after all, was literally part of the service? 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 dominance, I might stick up for myself," states Done, rapidly.

Was it then about a desire to leave the stigma of gaming, which blights numerous neighborhoods, and specifically, as studies, external have revealed, the kind of denied locations in which he grew up?

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

Done's explanation for turning his back on betting shops is that he merely chose the odds on the planet of HR insurance coverage and he enjoyed the challenge of scaling a brand-new company.

However, he still utilizes the lessons he found out as a teenager in the betting stores despite the fact that his location of work nowadays could barely be more various, he states. Peninsula's multi-level workplaces are those of a common call-centre, with banks of people chatting on headsets. Everything is brilliant and shiny and the walls are covered with motivational slogans. And there are carpets.

"It's all about renewals and recurring earnings," describes Done, when it comes to the chances of the organization's success. The customers registering to Peninsula are no various to punters in a 1960s wagering store, in that sense. Quality of service identifies if somebody returns. And it's less expensive to restore a consumer than to set up a new one.

A piece of business guidance that Done has found out in recent years, though, is that you just 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 conspicuously reward those who provide excellent service.

Among his own rewards for his service success is being able to blend with people from Manchester United football club, a team he has actually supported because childhood. He is a regular at the Old Trafford stadium, in addition to his bro, socializing with senior figures from the club, both past and present.

One buddy is legendary supervisor Sir Alex Ferguson, who provided him some unforgettable guidance when they shared a beverage on vacation a couple of years back, he states: "Keep control and make choices, even if they are incorrect. The worst thing is not to make a choice."

Peter Done feels his time in organization has actually followed those precepts, not least since his family have kept ownership - and therefore control - of all the services they have actually developed. And when it comes to decision-making, he waits the specifying one of 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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