CEO Secrets: From Ordsall poverty to being a billionaire

24 November 2021

ByDougal Shaw
Business press reporter, BBC News

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

The offender was Fred, his elder brother by 4 years. He shared a bed with him up until he was 15 in the household's two-up, two-down in Ordsall, called the "shanty towns of Salford". Their 2 sisters slept in the room too.

"To this promotion code 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 sibling that would be the secret to his success in life. The siblings found a route out of hardship by developing up an empire of betting stores, amassing themselves a billion-pound family fortune, making them a routine fixture on the Sunday Times Rich List, external.

Both Done bros left school at 15 with no qualifications.

However, they found employment in a chain of betting shops in Manchester. Like pubs, these establishments prospered in poor areas. 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 handling a wagering store at 17 even though he lawfully couldn't get in the properties.

The owner valued him for his skill at mathematics. He cared for the books, mentally number crunching the stakes, profits and losses.

In the late sixties these were frightening places to work - never mind if you were just a teen. They were controlled by men and the design often resembled that of a prison. Things might turn violent, specifically after 3pm on a Saturday when individuals spilled in from the bars, Done remembers.

"You could not reveal weak point," he says, "due to the fact that then these tough guys would acknowledge you were a simple touch."

Both Done and his sibling revealed a style for running these places and by the time Peter turned 21 in 1967, the two had their own shop. They bought it from a retired bookmaker for ₤ 4,000 - ₤ 1,000 of which was a deposit Peter Done had actually saved as much as buy a home with his new wife.

He was pleased to take this promotion code danger due to the fact that he currently had six years experience in the organization behind him, and he always believed he could run a store better than his managers, provided the possibility.

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

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

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

"If a punter had a big win the bookie utilized to throw the cash at them and state, 'do not return once again!' whereas we 'd state, 'here's your money, enjoy it!'

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

The siblings also did not like the reality that bookies' shops looked like "hovels".

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

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

But it was an event throughout this promotion code consistent growth that resulted in Peter Done leaving the wagering world behind. The siblings needed to settle a case out of court with a worker at a brand-new store they were taking over.

They felt bruised by the procedure. This led them to purchase a new organization that outsourced HR expertise and covered legal charges on a subscription basis.

This ended up being Peninsula and Peter Done has been its CEO for 35 years now. Its newly-built headquarters are a glossy glass skyscraper and dominate the Manchester skyline just north of Victoria station.

Done's office neglects Ordsall, where he matured. Peninsula has actually grown steadily over the 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 company's client base has grown by more than 12% throughout the course of the pandemic, as businesses around the globe rushed to upgrade their HR and security policies, whether it's about working from home, social distancing or vaccination rules. In time, his profession gamble appears to have actually settled.

However, in the mid-1980s, though business's future revealed signs of promise, the odds on its success weren't clear cut, and the bros had to decide. Who would run it?

The decision about who needs to 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 elder bro, though he remains a major 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 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 might stick up for myself," states Done, rapidly.

Was it then about a desire to leave the stigma of betting, which blights many neighborhoods, and particularly, 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, but the vast bulk of people who go in a betting store do it for fun and do it within their pocket."

Done's explanation for turning his back on betting stores is that he simply chose the odds in the world of HR insurance coverage and he delighted in the difficulty of scaling a new service.

However, he still uses the lessons he learned as a teenager in the betting stores although his workplace nowadays could hardly be more different, he states. Peninsula's multi-level workplaces are those of a typical call-centre, with banks of individuals chatting on headsets. Everything is bright and glossy and the walls are covered with inspirational mottos. And there are carpets.

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

A piece of organization suggestions that Done has actually learned over the last few years, though, is that you just achieve that great service at scale if you treat your employees well and incentivize them - so he intends for high staff retention and makes it a policy to conspicuously reward those who offer excellent service.

Among his own benefits for his service success is having the ability to mix with people 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 brother, mingling with senior figures from the club, both past and present.

One buddy is legendary manager Sir Alex Ferguson, who gave him some remarkable suggestions when they shared a beverage on vacation a couple of years ago, 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 followed those precepts, not least because his household have actually kept ownership - and for that reason control - of all business they have developed. 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 brother.

You can follow CEO Secrets press reporter Dougal Shaw on Twitter: @dougalshawbbc, external

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