Growth

John McDonnell and the Billionaires

Posted on by edreidyork


It sounds like a band that plays at weddings doesn’t it? Five middle-aged guys, hair receding, waistbands straining, but still convincing themselves they’re young so long as they can rock out Layla at the new hotel just off the motorway…

Sadly not. As all of you know, John McDonnell wants to be our next Chancellor of the Exchequer, and last week he made a speech. He promised to “re-write the rules of our economy” and singled out the UK’s 151 billionaires for special treatment. “No-one,” he said, “Needs or deserves to be a billionaire.” 

Well, I don’t know any of the UK’s 151 billionaires. I do know plenty of millionaires: I also know plenty of bosses: or – as they appear to be increasingly demonised in this election campaign – ‘exploitative bosses.’ 

This particular exploitative boss is starting the notes for his blog in Exeter Airport. I’ve been down to the South West to see Rick, TAB UK’s most southerly and westerly franchisee. I’ve had a brilliant time, and met a lot of business people from the South West, many of whom were hearing about TAB for the first time – and who liked what they heard. 

Oddly, I didn’t meet any exploitative bosses. Come to think of it, I know as many ‘exploitative bosses’ as I know billionaires. 

We’re now just under two weeks away from the election. December 12th will no doubt be cold wet and dark: the polls will be open long after the sun has set. But by the time the sun rises on Friday 13th, we’ll know the outcome. At the moment it looks as though Boris Johnson will win with a working majority, which will mean we leave the European Union on or before January 31st. 

There are many, many points on which I disagree with Boris Johnson, not least the decision to leave the EU. 

But there are two where I do agree. Firstly he’s quite right: the only way we can have world class public services is to pay for them with a vibrant, expanding, highly-skilled economy. Secondly – and even more importantly – talent, enterprise, initiative and ambition is absolutely distributed around every region of the UK. 

That’s what I saw when I went down to the South West to meet Rick and his fellow business owners. Every single one of them wanted to build their business and contribute to their local economy. Exploitative bosses? Not a bit of it. 

They weren’t lying awake at night working out how to cheat the taxman and drive down the pay and conditions of the people who worked for them. No: they were worrying about cash flow, about being responsible for 25 mortgages, about how to tell Bill that the company has moved on and he hasn’t, about which local charity their company will support next year, about…

You get my drift. The list is endless. 

That is why I am so passionate about building TAB UK – not just because of what it can do for our members, but because of what those members of TAB can do for their local economies and communities. 

And it is why I am equally passionate about business making its voice heard in this election campaign. It is not so long ago that Liam Fox – then International Trade Secretary – made his crass comments about business owners being ‘fat, lazy and off to play golf.’ 

Could anything be further from the truth than that piece of idiocy and the idea of ‘exploitative bosses’ doing everything they can to rip off their workers? 

The problem is that Mike Ashley and Philip Green – the pantomime villains if you like – get all the headlines. And yet they are as far away from a typical TAB UK member as I am from Justin Rose or Rory McIlroy – no matter how much time I spend on the golf course, Mr Fox…

Let me end by returning to billionaires. Britain’s richest man is commonly held to be Jim Ratcliffe who – according to his Wiki entry – has a net worth of £21bn. 

Jim Ratcliffe lived in a council house up to the age of 10. He moved with his family to East Yorkshire, went to Beverley Grammar School and subsequently Birmingham University, graduating with a degree in Chemical Engineering. He added an MSc in finance before joining a US private equity group and then founding Ineos, a company that now employs 22,000 people around the world. 

I have absolutely no doubt that on the way to being worth £21bn Jim Ratcliffe had plenty of sleepless nights. There will have been a day when his business was perilously close to going under. Another day when he wondered how the hell he was going to pay the wages. He will have had to part company with ‘Bill.’ And he will have worked tirelessly at building his business – and found that, almost by accident, he has become very wealthy. 

So as the politicians continue to squabble, ordinary business owners need to tell their story. Yes, business owners want to make a success of their company. Yes, they want to provide for their families. And along the way they may well become wealthy. But that is never the prime motivator. 

Every member of TAB UK I know – from those working with Rick in Exeter to our members in Aberdeen – cares passionately about his employees and his local community. They care about paying mortgages, providing the best working conditions they can and helping every member of their team to grow. And I am proud to be associated with every single one of them. 

The Pace of Change Accelerates

Posted on by edreidyork


For all my life there have been three fundamental facts about the car industry.

  • Cars were driven by people
  • People owned cars – and aspired to own cars
  • And the cars were powered by the internal combustion engine.

But suddenly, all that is changing. Driverless cars have moved from science fiction to simple fact. My two boys, Dan and Rory, will both learn to drive – but I’m almost certain that their children won’t need to.

The dream of owning your first car? The step up from a Ford to an Audi, and the confirmation you were moving up the company ladder? Last year, half a billion people around the world used a ride-hailing app, pushing the value of companies like Uber and Chinese firm DiDi to over $50bn.

And now the internal combustion engine is giving way to the electric car – and quite possibly to the hydrogen cell.

But it’s not going to end there.

Consider these simple facts. Fifty-six companies have obtained a permit to conduct tests on autonomous vehicles (self-driving cars) in the state of California. (Remember that if California were a country it would have the 5th largest GDP in the world: we are not talking an insignificant sample here.)

Of those 56 companies, 71% are ‘tech native’ companies – from Google and Apple that you’ve heard of, to companies like Drive.ai, Zoox and Pony.ai that you probably haven’t.

And governments around the world are ever more concerned about emission targets, road safety and subsidies for electric vehicles – as people continue to embrace a pay-per-use and sharing economy, and car ownership starts to fall.

Clearly, the traditional car industry is under attack, much as the traditional banking sector is under attack from the challenger banks and fintech. You might argue that the car industry is making a better fist of fighting back than the banks – the luxury car brands, for example, have a powerful hold on their customers, at least for now. And the big car makers have been busy with mergers, acquisitions and partnerships.

But in the long term the continued success of the traditional car industry will depend on its ability to attract the talented software engineers that would otherwise join Google, Amazon and Apple – and on its ability to fight off competition from the Far East.

And now let’s change tack completely: from the internal combustion engine to veganism. Go back nine years to when I started this blog and most people knew three or four vegetarians. Now? Recent data suggests that the number of vegans in the UK has soared by 700% in the last two years. There are reports than one person in seven now identifies as a vegetarian.

And that is being reflected in business and finance. In the US, investment is pouring into ‘alternative food’ manufacturers: NotCo, a company that ‘combines AI with food science to craft cutting-edge plant based foods’ has just attracted $30m of investment, including money from Jeff Bezos’ family vehicle.

What astonishes me is that how many ideas that were on the drawing board, or which were the stuff of fantasy* nine years ago are now accepted technological developments.

I frequently write that the world is changing at an ever faster pace. Sometimes you think ‘well, is it really?’ But then I go back to my original blog posts and know that it absolutely is. Management consultants McKinsey have suggested that this AI-powered fourth industrial revolution is advancing ten times faster and at 300 times the scale of the original industrial revolution.

So quite clearly entire industries – and countries – are going to be affected. The German economy has been the engine driving Europe, but it only narrowly averted a technical recession in the last quarter. According to Bloomberg, the German auto industry employs 835,000 people: it accounts for 20% of the country’s exports. Suddenly the three fundamental changes outlined above put the industry – and Germany’s seemingly inevitable balance of payments surplus – under threat as never before.

And very clearly, what happens in Germany will mirror what happens in other countries, including the UK. When he was Chancellor George Osborne was very fond of saying how the UK could never be immune to what happened in the wider world. Equally clearly, it cannot be immune to changes in consumer behaviour and the technology that drives those changes. What is happening in the car industry and in food production will happen in countless other industries – very possibly including yours and mine.

We are living through exciting times – but we’re all going to face unprecedented challenges. If there was ever a time when you needed the strength of the TAB community around you, that time is now.

*Sadly, Newcastle United’s dominance of Europe remains the stuff of fantasy…

By Ed Reid, TAB UK

Read more of Ed’s Blogs here:

The Seven Ages of the Entrepreneur

Posted on by edreidyork


I like a nice drop o’ Shakespeare…

Macbeth’s my favourite, but as far as speeches go, I’m drawn to As You Like It, and Jaques’ speech to Duke Senior, which many of you will know…

All the world’s a stage/And all the men and women merely players/They have their exits and their entrances/And one man in his time plays many parts/His acts being seven ages. 

This idea of the world as a stage wasn’t new, even in the 16thCentury. Shakespeare borrowed it from the Greek dramatists, who no doubt borrowed it from someone even earlier. 

Neither was the idea of ‘seven ages’ new: in Shakespeare’s case, infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, the justice, the lean and slippered pantaloon and – finally – sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. 

Which, of course, raises a simple question for me, and for any man:which age am I at? 

Am I a soldier, still ‘seeking my reputation, even in the canon’s mouth?’ Or am I now the justice? In fair round belly with good capon lined/With eyes severe and beard of formal cut/Full of wise saws and modern instances. 

Perhaps more to the point, what age am I as an entrepreneur?

There are, I think, seven ages of the entrepreneur, just as Shakespeare had seven ages of man. Let’s see if we can define them – although, sorry, I won’t be doing it in iambic pentameters…

Pushing your breakfast round the plate 

My story of the first age of the entrepreneur is well-known now. If it’s characterised by one word, that word was ‘frustration.’ 

‘There has to be a better way.’ ‘What am I doing in Milton Keynes when my son is in the nativity play?’ 

The first age of the entrepreneur is the age when you decideto be an entrepreneur: when you make the decision that – for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer – you are going to be in charge of your own destiny.

“Doesn’t Daddy have a job any more?” 

And running through all those seven ages is a common thread: your family, the people you love, the people you are doing it for. Ultimately – as I intimated last week – ‘family’ comes to mean a lot more than immediate family. I’m very, very conscious now that my family – the people for whom I feel a responsibility – is far wider than the three people in South Milford, but when you start your journey, you musttake your immediate family with you. 

Your partner will need to come to terms with the fact that – for now at least – her security has gone. She may suddenly be the main breadwinner. And you’ll need to explain to your children that yes, Daddy doeshave a job – ‘and the reason I’m working in the spare room, sweetheart, is that nothing is more important than collecting you from school.’ 

A man and a lad 

I remember this from years ago – before I became a ‘coach’ and I was just giving advice to a friend. “There was me an’ a lad,” he said. “And I was doing alright. Now there’s me an’ seven lads and an office manager and I’m not making any more money.”

This is a key age for the entrepreneur. It’s the age where you learn two valuable lessons: businesses progress in steps, not straight lines and – much more importantly – you can’t go back. If the first age is characterised by ‘frustration’ the third age of the entrepreneur is characterised by ‘unemployable.’ You wake up one morning and realise that you’ve changed too much. You cannot go back to your old, corporate world. As you turn round, the bridge is burning brightly. 

The man who couldn’t play frisbee any more 

The title of this age is taken from one of my favourite blog posts. Just as you wake up one morning and realise that you can’t go back, so you wake up and realise that you’re no longer ‘one of the lads.’ You’re the leader, your job is to lead and – sooner or later – that means difficult decisions, quite possibly affecting someone’s career, family and mortgage. That’s when the loneliness of the entrepreneur hits home – and it’s when The Alternative Board appears on your radar. When you realise that the only person who truly understands is another successful entrepreneur. 

Make Good Art 

If ‘The Man who Couldn’t Play Frisbee’ was one of my favourite blogs this one – blog post no. 99 – possibly still ranks as my absolute favourite. The title came from a commencement address which writer Neil Gaimangave to Philadelphia’s University of the Arts in 2012. 

His message was simple: ‘make good art.’ Whatever you do, that is your art – and you should do it to the very best of your ability. And that’s where you are as an entrepreneur. Your business is established, you’ve accepted that you can’t play frisbee any more – your children even believe you have a proper job again! And every day, you are striving for excellence. Whatever your business does – from web to widgets – you ‘make good art’ and you do it consistently and remorselessly. 

Building something serious 

Remember those steps? Businesses progress not in a straight line but in a series of steps? ‘Good art’ may now consist of a lot of time with solicitors, bankers and accountants. 

But one morning you wake up and realise that you havetaken another step. Maybe your profits or your turnover have hit a level you once considered impossible: maybe your staff levels have done the same. Either way, you’re no longer just a business, you’re part of the community – maybe part of the regional or national business community. Which means that suddenly there are demands on your time which start to take you away from the business, and – although you don’t realise it immediately – prepare you for the final age of the entrepreneur. 

Giving Back

That little girl who wondered if ‘Daddy still had a proper job?’ Well, she’s all grown up now and – despite your best efforts – you can no longer convince yourself you’re 39…

It’s time to sell the business, pass it on to the team you’ve built or maybe even stand aside for your son or daughter. But that doesn’t mean your time as an entrepreneur is at an end. Far from it: and this is one of the key lessons I learned from Paul. 

When an entrepreneur sells his business, very often he gets a new lease of life. Because there’s a new generation of entrepreneurs who need coaching, guiding and mentoring. There are challenges and opportunities in your local community. The entrepreneur’s age of giving back can be the best age of them all…

So where am I? Unquestionably I’m ‘building something serious.’ If TAB York took me through the first five ages of the entrepreneur, TAB UK is the sixth (and yes, complete with bankers, solicitors and accountants…)

And – together with the extended ‘family’ I talked about earlier – we are unquestionably building something very serious. 

So let me end exactly where I began, with Shakespeare. ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ said Macbeth, again using the stage as a metaphor for life.

Macbeth ends the speech with ‘signifying nothing.’ But for TAB UK, ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ signifies a verybright future. I couldn’t be more excited about our plans for the years ahead and I couldn’t be more excited about the people I’m privileged to work with every day.

The Biggest River in the World

Posted on by edreidyork


Do you remember when you first heard of it?

“There’s this company in America. Only sells books. And only sells them online.”

“Really? What’s it called?”

“Amazon, I think.”

“Right. Well good luck with that. I read somewhere that people aren’t reading books any more. And it’s not like this internet thing is going to last…”

You probably had that conversation some time in the late 90s. Just 20 years later Amazon is the biggest online retailer in the world as measured by revenue and market capitalisation. And Jeff Bezos, founder, chairman, president and CEO, is the richest man in the world.

BEZOS

How has Bezos built Amazon to where it is now? And more importantly, are there any lessons we can apply to our rather more modest businesses?

Amazon was founded in July 1994. It was originally called Cadabra, but that name was jettisoned after someone mistakenly heard it as ‘cadaver.’ Bezos also considered calling the company ‘Relentless’ – but that was dismissed for sounding “slightly sinister.”

So why did Bezos settle on Amazon as a name? Because it sounded “exotic and different” and because it was the biggest river in the world and he intended to create the biggest bookstore in the world. “There’s nothing about our model that can’t be copied,” he told a reporter. “McDonald’s got copied and still built a huge, multibillion dollar company. A lot of it comes down to the brand name: they’re more important online than they are in the physical world.”

So lesson number one, brand names are important and lesson number two – not that I’ve ever said this before – the job of a leader is first and foremost to lead, to know where the company is going. “We’re going to create the biggest bookstore in the world.” Good, that’s the destination sorted: and if you want to join me on the journey, that’s fine.

Since then, of course, Amazon has gone on to become rather more than just a bookstore, even going back to a substantial bricks and mortar presence with the purchase of Whole Foods for $13.4bn in 2017.

Now Amazon supplies everything. I am constantly amazed by how many everyday items I buy from them. It simply isn’t worth going shopping – we’ll leave the rights and wrongs of Amazon’s impact on the high street to another day – when I know that Amazon will deliver for free tomorrow. And yes, I still remember the sense of wonderment when I first ordered something late at night and it turned up – as promised – the next day.

There are now more than 100 million members of Amazon Prime: that’s equivalent to 64% of the households in the US and for me it’s lesson number three. Deliver what you promise to deliver, on time, every time.

But the biggest lesson from Amazon is simple. It’s one that all of us in the TAB family know all too well – but it never hurts to be reminded.

No regrets.

When he founded Amazon at the age of 30 Jeff Bezos was a vice-president of a Wall Street brokerage. He was presumably on course for a successful and wealthy career.

But he went west, as a result of what he described as his ‘regret minimisation framework.’ In a 2010 speech at Princeton he described the decision as “the less safe path.”

“I decided I had to give it a shot,” he said. “I didn’t think I’d regret trying and failing. And I suspected that I would also be haunted by the decision not to try.”

The company was funded with $100,000 of personal and family money. Within a month of the launch it had already shipped to every US state and to 45 countries. In the first five years customer accounts jumped from 180,000 to 17 million. Sales went from $511,000 to $1.6bn – and Jeff Bezos was one of the world’s richest men.

One final lesson? An absolute focus on your customer. Amazon has always been a company willing to spend money to make money. It failed to make an annual profit in 10 of its first 23 years as it ploughed money back into what Bezos described as a “heads down focus on the customer,” cutting prices, offering free shipping and developing new devices like the Kindle.

Along the way Amazon has revolutionised our shopping habits: the current buzzword, disruption, doesn’t begin to describe it. And like every successful company, plenty of ex-employees have gone on to found very successful companies of their own – always a measure of an entrepreneur’s success.

But none of it would have happened without Jeff Bezos’ regret minimisation framework – his decision to take the less safe path. The poet Robert Frost put it rather more eloquently, in words which speak to every single entrepreneur:

Two roads diverged in a wood and I –

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Xi Jinping is on the March. Should we be Worried?

Posted on by edreidyork


One of my more serious posts this, and it doesn’t come much more serious than the 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party held last week in Beijing.

The Chinese capital is a fair old distance from the UK – 4,978 miles from TAB HQ in Harrogate if Google is to be believed – so should we really worry about what’s happening there? Wouldn’t we be better off just concentrating on our businesses?

Maybe not…

Napoleon famously said, “Let China sleep. When she wakes, the world will tremble.” Well, China most certainly is awake now, and last week President Xi Jinping was confirmed in power for another five years. While Europe was struggling to agree on when talks about talks about Brexit might begin, Xi was calmly laying out plans for China to dominate the world economy. No surprise that Forbes is now suggesting China will overtake America to become the biggest economy in the world as early as next year

But let’s step back a moment. Who is Xi Jinping? He may not have a perma-tan or a tower named after him, but it is arguable that China’s Xi Jinping is the real holder of the ‘most powerful man in the world’ title.

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Five years into a theoretical ten year term Xi is the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Born on June 15th 1953 he is married to Peng Liyuan and has one daughter, who was educated at Harvard. His wife was formerly a very popular singer on Chinese TV and among her hits are those classic rock anthems, People from our Village, My Motherland and In the Field of Hope.

Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, was a hero of the Communist revolution and, as such, Xi enjoyed a privileged upbringing as a ‘red princeling.’ All that changed with Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution: his father was imprisoned, the family humiliated and one of his sisters committed suicide. At the age of 15 Xi was sent to the countryside to be re-educated. The story is that Xi lived in a cave in the mountains – but he survived and at the age of 22 he returned from the countryside, “full of confidence and with my life goals firm.”

With his father released from prison and rehabilitated, Xi joined the Communist Party and began a steady, if unspectacular, rise through the ranks. By his 50s he was a senior party leader, but someone still with a reputation for dull competency. When he became Communist party leader in 2012 he was very much a compromise choice – but since then he has ruthlessly consolidated his power. He is now unquestionably China’s strongest leader since Chairman Mao.

So while Theresa May was begging for help (according to Jean-Claude Juncker) and Jean-Claude Juncker was heading for the bar (according to David Davis) Xi Jinping – untroubled by petty irritations like democracy – was telling the delegates what was going to happen and sending them back to work. Specifically, he was telling them about ‘One Belt, One Road.’

China has a domestic population approaching 1.4bn – nearly one-fifth of the world population of 7.5bn (do not click the link: it is terrifying). But ‘One Belt, One Road’ – a huge infrastructure project – is intended to massively extend its economic reach, market and influence.

First mooted by Xi Jinping around 2013, the initiative will see China’s push into global economic affairs extending through a land based Silk Road Economic Belt and the Maritime Silk Road, with the focus being on infrastructure investment, construction, railways and highways, automobiles, power and iron and steel.

The land based Belt runs across Asia and through Europe. The Maritime Road (yes, you would have thought that the ‘road’ would be on land…) reaches South East Asia, Oceania and North Africa. More than 65 countries, 4.4bn people (63% of the world’s population) and 29% of the world’s current GDP are in its path.

Sitting here in the West it is easy to see the Belt and Road initiative as simply a naked power grab. I think I’ll keep the blog out of geo-politics, but what’s undeniable is that it will give China access to vast natural resources and a huge pool of labour. And whatever you think about the rights and wrongs of the situation, that is not a labour market wrapped in red tape about a national living wage or health and safety.

In the medium to long term that has to impact on manufacturing industry in the West – and as advances continue to be made in robotics and AI, it may end up impacting a lot more than manufacturing. China is awake, she is flexing her muscles and we may all have cause to tremble in the future.

Meanwhile let us finish with a word of sympathy for the delegates back at the Congress Hall – who may well have been glad to escape at the end. Xi Jinping spoke for 3 hours and 23 minutes to an audience that was by no means in the first flush of youth. What’s the Chinese for ‘comfort break?’ A four-hour TAB meeting needs at least one interval. But given that popping out in the leader’s speech was almost certainly a treasonable offence, you have to wonder how they coped…

Increasingly Productive – just not Officially…

Posted on by edreidyork


Well there you are. The Ed Reid Blog scores again.

Joe Root hits the highest ever score by someone captaining England for the first time, and it’s the first win over South Africa at Lords since the average house cost £2,530 and a season ticket to watch Manchester United was £8-10-0d. I tell you, I’m wasting my time writing business blogs…

But the ECB haven’t phoned me, my invoice for ‘sports psychology coaching’ remains resolutely unpaid so here I am – considering the UK’s fairly dismal productivity figures.

productivity

Last week the Office for National Statistics released figures showing that the productivity of UK workers had dropped to levels last seen before the financial crisis – hourly output is now 0.4% below the peak recorded at the end of 2007.

We’ve all known for some time that UK productivity lags behind its major competitors such as the US, France and Germany. A quick glance at the world productivity ‘league table’ shows the UK languishing in 13th place. Norway lead the way, from Luxembourg and the United States, but the UK is scarcely ahead of those sun-kissed holiday destinations where everything closes for the afternoon.

The UK has recovered well since the 2008 crisis but – according to the learned pundits and commentators – that is a product of more people working, and of people working longer hours, rather than a function of increased productivity. Kamal Ahmed, BBC Economics Editor, wrote, “Today’s figures are bad to the point of shocking. [The figures] take the UK’s ability to create wealth back below the level of 2007 – and if an economy cannot create wealth, then tax receipts, the mainstay of government income, will weaken.” Others have blamed underinvestment, the uncertainty caused by Brexit and the current political situation, and sluggish wage growth.

But you know what? I think it may be time to reach for one of the more valuable business tools – a healthy pinch of salt.

Because as I look around me, I don’t see falling productivity. I see exactly the opposite. Virtually every business I work with is busier than they’ve ever been.

Yes, there’s uncertainty: but when has there not been uncertainty for the entrepreneur? And no, the vast majority of the people I work with didn’t vote for Brexit: but they’ve moved on. People running businesses are no longer fighting last year’s war: they’ve accepted the result and they’re now looking to future.

For all the despondency from much of the media, I’d say the ‘optimism index’ among owners and directors of SMEs is high. They’re certainly working hard enough: according to this story in City AM half of them took fewer than six days off last year. (Don’t worry, I’ll be taking them to task in the coming weeks…)

So I’m sceptical about the productivity figures. Traditionally, a country’s productivity is calculated by a splendidly complex formula with references to 2005 and 2013 comparators.

I suspect that we may need a new metric: the nature of productivity is changing. Web designers, app developers, SEO experts – there are plenty of jobs now which did not exist ten years ago and which don’t lend themselves to traditional ‘output’ measurements. London remains the tech capital of Europe and more people are working across borders: it may be that productivity is simply getting harder to measure by the previously used methods.

Then there are the regional differences – output per hour worked in London’s financial and insurance sectors was around seven times higher than in the regions with the lowest industrial productivity – and, even more importantly, the company-by-company differences. I am absolutely certain that if we had a ‘TAB UK productivity index’ we would be right at the top of any league table. I like to think a small part of that is because TAB keeps people focused on being productive, not on being busy.

As Paul J Meyer, founder of the Leadership Management Institute said, “Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focused effort.”

I don’t know anyone who captures that more than the TAB UK members, and it has been a real privilege to meet more and more of them over the last few months. I couldn’t be more excited about all our – very productive – futures.

More advice for Joe Root

Posted on by edreidyork


On July 22nd last year I posed a simple question: did Joe Root want to be just a very, very good cricketer – or did he want to become one of the game’s greats?

I received my answer the same day. Root scored 254 against Pakistan and England won the game by 330 runs.

A year on and – by the time you read this – Joe Root will have completed his first day as England captain. I’m tempted to question whether he’s the right the man for the job, just to make sure we win the game…

But at 26 Joe Root steps into a new role. No longer the cheeky young upstart in the dressing room, no longer ‘one of the lads:’ he’s the captain, the public face of English cricket.

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As so often, there are parallels between sport and business. In taking over the captaincy, Joe Root is simply mirroring what so many of us have done in our careers: been promoted, moved to a new company, even acquired a business. And we’ve had to a walk into a new office and simply say, “Good morning, I’m the boss.”

So in my unheralded – and sadly unpaid – role as The Secret Coach to the new skipper, let me pass on some advice, which applies in business just as much as it applies in sport.

You still have to justify your place in the side. As the owner of TAB York I had the pleasure of working with Suzanne Burnett, then MD of Castle Employment in Scarborough. Suzanne’s now handed over the reins to Kerry Hope, and last week in her ever-excellent blog Suzanne introduced Kerry as the new MD. This Q&A is relevant to all of us:

Q: Let’s just talk about those people [the team at Castle who didn’t know her] for a minute. How did you establish your credibility with them?

A: That’s a good point – and it’s something any manager going into a new company has to do: ‘show us your medals’ as they say in football. Maybe in recruitment that should be ‘show us your fees.’ I made absolutely certain that first and foremost I performed as a fee earner, so everyone could see that what I was saying – and the changes I was recommending – absolutely worked.

It’s the same for any new manager, for anyone taking over a company and it will be the same for Joe Root. If your performance can be measured, then you need to perform.

But you will have bad days. It’ll happen. Rooty will get a jaffa first nut and be back in the hutch for a duck.

What do you mean ‘you don’t understand?’ Sigh… The England captain will receive an unplayable delivery first ball and be back in the pavilion without scoring.

Sport and sales are equally unforgiving. The numbers are there for everyone to see. We all go through bad spells but the answer is simple. Keep believing in yourself, keep doing what you know is right and trust that the results will come – which they will. But you’re the leader now – everyone will be watching to see how you respond to a bad day: and how you respond determines how everyone else will respond.

Find a way to manage your stress. Well, no worries for Joe there. His son was born about six months ago. There are those of us, however, to whom a new baby would come as something of a surprise. That’s why I’m such an advocate of keeping fit, of spending time with friends and family and making sure you have interests outside work. All work and no play not only make Joe a dull boy, it makes him an inefficient, unproductive one as well.

Prepare to be lonely. Sad but true. We’ve said it many times on this blog but being an entrepreneur – or the captain – can be a lonely business. You get the accolades and you get to lift the trophy. But you also have to deal with the lows: as Joe Root will find, you’re not only managing yourself, you’re manging other people – and part of that will be delivering bad news. Saying to someone who’s been with you a long time, ‘I’m sorry, we’re going to make a change.’

There are a hundred and one other pieces of advice I could pass on – be there first in the morning, demand high standards of yourself and your team will automatically raise their standards – but lastly, and most importantly, lead. The job of a leader is to lead: to have conviction. To have the sheer bloody-minded conviction that his team will win, that his business will succeed.  After all, Joe, if you don’t believe, no-one else will…

Are you Still the Best Person?

Posted on by edreidyork


There’s no better story of the new, disruptive economy than Uber. What could be more set in stone than your local taxi company? But along comes Uber, along comes an iPhone app and everything is different.

Equally there could be no more archetypal disruptive entrepreneur than Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick.

Travis Cordell Kalanick is 40. He dropped out of UCLA (obviously: dropping out is mandatory for the disruptive entrepreneur).

His first business venture – with partners – was a multimedia search engine and file sharing company called Scour, which ultimately filed for bankruptcy.

Next came Red Swoosh, another peer-to-peer file sharing company. Red Swoosh struggled: Kalanick went three years without a salary, had to move back into his parents’ home and at one point owed the IRS $110,000. All the company’s engineers left and our hero was forced to move to Thailand as a cost saving measure. But in 2007 Akamai Technologies bought the company for $19m.

In 2009 Kalanick joined forces with Garrett Camp, co-founder of Stumble Upon, to develop a ride sharing app called Uber. And the rest as they say…

Uber now operates in 66 countries and more than 500 cities around the world. Wiki lists Kalanick’s net worth at $6.3bn. Presumably he’s not living at home any more.

But neither is Kalanick still at Uber. On June 20th he resigned as CEO after multiple shareholders demanded his resignation. We’ve all read the stories: let’s just file them under ‘abrasive personality.’

Looking at Kalanick’s early struggles he ticks every box for an entrepreneur. Dropped out of college, saw the future, first venture failed, money problems, do whatever it takes, absolute persistence, never lost faith in himself and – eventually – jackpot!

We can all imagine some of the scenes: we may not have ticked all the same boxes in our own entrepreneurial careers, but we’ve ticked enough to imagine Kalanick’s journey. And to empathise with it…

But now he’s gone. And his departure from Uber prompts an interesting question.

Are you still the best person to run your company?

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When I pushed my breakfast round my plate in Newport Pagnell services and decided to work for myself there were two main motivations. They were frustration: “There has to be something better than this,” and family: “Someone else is dictating how much time I spend with my wife and children.”

In some ways I was luckier than most embryonic entrepreneurs: my experience told me I could manage and motivate a team. But I wasn’t thinking about that in Newport Pagnell: what – after proposing to my wife – has turned out to be the best decision of my life was motivated purely by frustration at what I was then going through, and a determination to be there as my boys were growing up.

I suspect the vast, overwhelming majority of entrepreneurs are the same. We all started by saying, ‘I want to create something, I want to be in control of my own life, I want to build a future for my family.’ We didn’t say, ‘Oh yes, I have the skills necessary to lead a team of 30.’ Famously, even Mark Zuckerberg had to learn how to manage Facebook.

So the skills you had then – vision, a willingness to take risks (with both your career and your family), persistence and that sheer, bloody-minded determination to succeed – may not be the skills you need now. In fact, there’s no ‘may’ about it. Maverick entrepreneurs don’t always make great managers: you may have been the only person who could have started your business, but are you the best person to keep it going? Is it time for the visionary to make way for the general manager?

I’m not going to answer the question: I’m simply going to state that it is one of the most interesting and fundamental questions we’ll all face as our businesses grow, and one we’ll all need to ask ourselves. As I talk to the other TAB franchisees and to more and more business owners who are nearing the end of their entrepreneurial careers, it’s a question which increasingly fascinates me. We can never stand still: we’re always growing, developing and learning. Whether it is internal change or external change, the challenges we face this year are never the same as the challenges we faced last year.

That’s why you need friends. Whether it is your colleagues round a TAB boardroom table, your other franchisees or my team here at head office, they’ll always be there with advice, insight – and the occasional reminder that we shouldn’t take ourselves too seriously…

The Road from Newport Pagnell

Posted on by edreidyork


Over the last seven years it has been my privilege to listen to some outstanding business advice from the members of TAB York. It’s been advice which has transformed businesses [and] transformed lives.

Those were words I used in my final paragraph last week. Some of you may have detected a valedictory tone.

Well, it’s not farewell. It is, however, time for a change.

Seven years ago I ‘pushed my breakfast round my plate in a desolate motorway service station’ and decided that enough was enough. I walked out of Newport Pagnell services determined to start my own business. In December 2009 TAB York was born and the journey since then has been by far the most rewarding of my business life.

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But, you come to a fork in the road: you have a choice to make and that choice determines your future direction.

In 2015 Paul Dickinson and Jo Clarkson offered me the chance to take over TAB UK – to become the franchise holder for the whole of the United Kingdom.

I thought about it long and hard. It was a significant financial commitment and it meant giving up the regular contact with the majority of my Board members. But that chance – and the challenge – had been offered to me. And – like so many TAB members up and down the country – I didn’t want to think “what if…”

I talked it over with Dav – several times – and thought about little else as I drove around North Yorkshire. And then I committed myself.

So I’m delighted to announce that from today I will no longer be responsible for TAB York: I will be responsible for TAB UK. It will be a challenge, but it’s also a huge opportunity for me. I’ll be going into business with an old friend, Mags Fuller, who’ll be my brilliant co-director and co-shareholder. And right now I’d like to place my thanks on record for all the help Mags has given me in getting the deal over the line, and to Paul and Jo for the incredible work they’ve done from the start.

So I’m looking forward to working with her, with all the franchisees and with Suzanne, Rena, Emma, Nathan and Nick – the outstanding team at TAB UK’s Harrogate head office.

Will I have regrets about giving up TAB York? Yes, of course I will. I’m no longer going to have the same monthly contact with several of my TAB York board members, all of whom have been a huge pleasure to work with and who have contributed to my life. As I said last week and repeated in the opening paragraph, it has been a privilege to work with them.

I will still be running one board, with Paul taking over the Board I’m relinquishing. Now, I’ll also be chairing our internal boards of the 28 TAB franchisees: that will see me leave Yorkshire for London and the North West once a month. Breakfast at Newport Pagnell? Maybe once, to reflect on how far I’ve come and how much TAB has given me.

And the blog? EdReidYork? Rest assured that it will continue: the tone and the content may be slightly different, but writing these words every week has been a central part of the last seven years: it’s given me a chance to pause and reflect and – in doing some of the research – I’ve learnt a lot. And the feedback has been consistently brilliant: intelligent, insightful and supportive.

So a chapter has ended – but a new, and very exciting one, is about to start. Let me finish for this week by saying thank you: firstly to the members of TAB York, who have simply been outstanding over the past seven years. And secondly to Dav and our boys for their support and encouragement as I take the next, exciting step in my career.

Rather more prosaically one of the next steps I take will be on to the ski slopes in Morzine. The blog will be on holiday next week as I try to keep up with Dan and Rory and will return on Friday March 3rd., tanned, relaxed and hopefully not aching too much!

A Glimpse of the Future

Posted on by edreidyork


I love my job: the opportunity it gives me to say “this is how it could be” – to see someone recognise the possibilities in their life and their work – is immensely fulfilling.

That’s a quote from last week’s post – and the inspiration for those two lines came from the second episode of Westworld.

One scene really struck a chord with me: it went to the heart of everything I do, and I’d like to expand on it this week.

I’m aware some of you may not have seen Westworld, so I’ll tread carefully. In the scene the increasingly desperate writer, Sizemore, presents a scheme for Westworld’s ‘greatest narrative yet.’ There’ll be maidens to seduce, Indians to kill and unnamed horrors that I’m not going to mention in a Friday morning blog post.

“Above all,” claims Sizemore, “It’ll show the guests who they really are.”

He’s shot down by Dr. Ford (Anthony Hopkins), the owner of Westworld.

The guests aren’t looking for a story that tells them who they are. They already know who they are. They’re here because they want a glimpse of who they could be.

Sometimes you’re watching a film, reading a book or listening to a song and there’s a line that absolutely hits home. That’s how it was for me last Tuesday. Hopkins captured not only the essence of Westworld, but also the essence of what I do for a living.

The entrepreneurs I speak to aren’t looking to be told who they are, or where their business is now. They already know that. They want a glimpse of who they could be: of how far they could take their business – and how far the business could take them.

The first time I meet someone, that’s all I can offer – a glimpse.

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What do I want in return? First and foremost, I want an entrepreneur with courage. Someone who – to quote Bobby Kennedy – is willing “not to see things as they are and ask ‘why?’ But to see things as they could be and ask ‘why not?’”

So it’s not someone who wants to gamble on the future, or even someone who’s endlessly positive and always sees the glass as half-full. What I’m looking for is an open mind: a willingness to step outside their comfort zone and the realisation (even though they might not be acting on it then) that you cannot become the person you want to be by continuing to be the person you are.

My job is to say, ‘”This is how it could be, for you and the company.”

I’m giving the entrepreneur permission to think about the future: I’m saying, “There’s the door, it’s OK to walk through it.”

In one of his TED talks Simon Sinek makes a significant point: Martin Luther King didn’t say ‘I have a plan’ – much less, ‘I have a business plan’ – he said “I have a dream.”

Giving people permission to dream – and a setting in which they can dream – is what a great TAB board does. Make no mistake, sitting there at your desk, being the person you’ve always been, isn’t conducive to dreaming. In order to think differently – to see things as they could be – you need to move out of your everyday environment.

Good leaders spend their time encouraging others: giving them the means and the encouragement to grow. But someone needs to tell the leaders they can grow as well: that it’s OK for them to dream, that they don’t always need to be the detached pragmatist running the company. That they can be who they could be.

So when I say, “This is how it could be” I’m opening the door and offering a glimpse of what’s on the other side. Hopefully the entrepreneur will walk through the door, where she’ll find half a dozen like-minded people waiting for her.

But going through that door can be painful. Because you’ll need to have a couple of conversations: one with your team, admitting that maybe you don’t have all the answers. And one – which I’ll tackle next week – with your spouse or partner, saying that you have room to grow: that you’ve had a dream, and you’re going to pursue it…