Peter Done is undoubtedly one of Manchester's most successful businessmen. Not content with helping to grow Betfred to the giant it is today, he also took an allaying company with 12 staff by the scruff of the neck and transformed it beyond recognition.
That company, Peninsula Group, now employs 3,500 people across five countries and achieved profits of over £100m during its latest financial year. With 14 businesses under its banner, the consultancy is also now eyeing expanding into the USA.
To mark the group's 40th anniversary, BusinessLive sat down for an exclusive interview with the billionaire. Mr Done spoke about the secret to his success, the biggest lesson he has learnt over his career as well as his largest mistakes.
READ MORE: Betfred's profits jump as UK gamblers wage over £8.8bn
READ MORE: Profits surge at billionaire Peter Done's Peninsula Group
He also shares his views on working from home, why he will never move to a tax haven and why he's not ready to retire just yet. He also spoke about the future of Peninsula and Betfred and why he has decided to give £1m to hundreds of small businesses in Greater Manchester to mark his group's anniversary.
Secret to success
By almost any metric, the Done brothers have done good. According to the latest Sunday Times Rich List, their wealth now totals £1.87bn, making them the 93rd richest people in Britain.
On that success, Mr Done said: "I think there are two things in business to be successful. One is definitely hard graft. If you're not prepared to put the work and the time in, you're not going to succeed.
"The other thing I've got to say is talent. You've got to work smart, you've got to be talented. I sometimes take it for granted thinking 'this is easy' because I've been doing it for so long.
"The real successful people in our sales department say, why can't everybody do this, and they don't realise that there is something a little bit special about selling your product, selling a service."
But with any amount of success there are also hard lessons and big mistakes along the way, "literally hundreds and hundreds, in Mr Done's case.
Asked what the biggest lessons he has learnt over his career, the businessman said: "First of all, don't get too excited when you're on a roll. If you do that, then you think, 'oh this is easy'. And don't get too down when times are bad.
"Some of my managers e-mail me; I get my figures and the numbers from all the businesses every night. And they have a good day and they think this is it. And then next week, they have a bad day on sales or service or something goes wrong. Straightaway, they're flat and absolutely down.
"I always say, you get your ups and downs and you've got to take it on the chin. I promise you, I never get stressed out about business on a single day, single week, single year, because I've learned my lesson from when I was 25.
"I was stressed out every single night about different things within the business that I was running with my brother. And I've learned over the years just to take it on the chin and make sure that you don't get too high when things are good."
On his mistakes, he added: "We've made literally hundreds and hundreds but what's key is that we make decisions. If you make a decision, rather than sitting on the fence, then, at least you get most of them right. We probably get eight or nine out of 10 correct because we've had experience.
"But in the early days we made a lot of decisions that probably stopped us being even further ahead in the game but everybody gets setbacks.
"We never bet the business on any one decision. We always look at the downside, when we're doing something, what could happen on this, what could happen on that, and that's the way you do it.
"So I think the key, the key to that is to make a decision, whether it's right or wrong, make a decision, the worst decision you can make is no decision."
Working from home
When the pandemic struck, the vast majority of businesses had to suddenly pivot to allowing their employees work from home. Most businesses have now transitioned to some form of hybrid working while some, such as Bolton's AO, has ordered everyone back to the office.
Mr Done said: "I really do think that when we were going through the pandemic, we had no choice. We changed the whole of our business model.
"Our business model was visiting businesses face to face with our sales team telling them over the desk what the proposition was and trying to get the business. But that had to change literally overnight.
"Up to the pandemic, we've never done any business over the phone, or by video, it had all been face to face because that's the way we can present our services in the best way possible and explain to the client what they're going to get for the money. But when the pandemic came, we had to change.
"We changed the whole of our business model and without that, I don't know where we would have been. That was a great lesson
"Now we have a number of our people still doing video conferencing, because clients quite often prefer that. But most of the business has gone back to face to face now.
"I can understand why a lot of people want to work from home. That's up to them if they want to do that, then that's great.
"I don't think you can build a team culture if somebody is sat 25 miles away. On that, it has got to be face to face."
The £1m give away
To mark Peninsula Group's 40th anniversary, Mr Done decided he wanted to do more than just hold a big party. He wanted to give something back to the business community of Greater Manchester.
The Fabulous at 40 campaign will see the group give away £1m in free services to 400 small businesses for one year..
Mr Done said: "I thought, we've been very, very lucky in business. We started very, very small, with 12 people in an office in Bexley Square. Now we've got 3,500 people in five different countries, with over 200,000 businesses subscribing to our services.
"When we came to the 40th anniversary, and we were thinking what we could do we could have easily had a big celebration in Manchester. But I said no, I think we need to put something back into the business community. We thought that we should give small businesses something that could really boost them and put them on the road to success.
"So we decided to give 400 £1m worth of services away for free to small businesses that really, really need it. We want to help the businesses that want to grow and succeed."
He added: "40 years ago, we were small business owners with a big problem. A former employee had taken us to an employment tribunal, and we lost. So I know how tough things can be. We took that loss and committed to ensure small business owners have access to the quality legal advice we didn't.
"That start became the global business Peninsula is today. For 40 years now, Peninsula has been championing and supporting SMEs, keeping them compliant and taking the legal strain and red tape off their shoulders.
"Now, to celebrate our 40th anniversary, we’re going even further. At Peninsula, we pride ourselves on building better businesses. So we’re giving away £1m in support to small businesses who need our help. We're looking for deserving charities, struggling start-ups and small businesses who are looking to grow.
"There is no catch, this is a genuine offer. We passionately believe in the power of small business, and it's our goal to ensure every small business is set up to succeed. This is our way of giving something back to the community to celebrate Peninsula’s 40 years of success."
Tax havens
It's a familiar story that many people with vast wealth decide to up sticks and leave the UK for a tax haven such as the Channel Islands or Monaco in order to avoid paying as much to the Exchequer as they might otherwise would. However, it's not a move that the Done brothers have made, deciding instead to stay in their native Salford.
Instead, the brothers were listed as paying £136.8m in tax in the most recent Sunday Times Tax List, the fifth-highest in the country.
Mr Done said: "I've got a house in the south of France 20 minutes from the border of Monaco. I could easily get an apartment in Monaco and save millions every year.
"But we do our business consultancy in the UK. It's international of course but we built our business here. We owe this country. I feel there is an obligation for people that have made the money in that country to pay the tax in that country.
"I really don't like when big business people move out straight away and then try and say it's for different reasons. Everybody knows why they moved to Monaco, why they moved to the Channel Islands. We've never done that, we're never going to be doing that. Fred and myself are stopping here."
Future plans
Just before the financial crisis of 2008, Betfred had been nearing a float on the London Stock Exchange. But the move was abandoned at the last minute as the economic situation took a turn for the worse.
On the future of Betfred, Mr Done said: "I've really had no day to day involvement with Betfred for the last 25 years. I'm still a shareholder, but I'm not a director. But obviously, I'm a major shareholder and I speak to Fred every day. There's no big decisions made without him at least speaking to me and saying what he's going to do.
"With regard to going on the stock exchange, I think, recent stock exchange IPOs have shown how difficult that can be, such as THG.
"We run our own business and we're responsible to ourselves and to our staff and to the people that work for us. We're not responsible to outside shareholders. So nobody can come back and say you had a bad day, you shouldn't have done this, you didn't do this and so on.
"I don't envisage that Fred will think about that again. I'd be absolutely amazed if he goes down that route. He's never mentioned it for the last 15 years. So I don't think he's going there."
While there are also no IPO plans for Peninsula, Mr Done does have big plans for its future.
"We've got a super business in Australia and that is really doing well", he said. "We opened in Canada about five years ago and it's absolutely flying now.
"I think the absolute golden nugget in our business is the Bright HR platform, the software that we've developed over a number of years and spent millions on developing.
"That's a wraparound software for all our clients and for anybody that wants to buy. It's absolutely brilliant. It's in Australia, Ireland and the UK. That's the real jewel in the crown going forward.
"We're hoping that eventually we can take it into the United States."
