I Sold my Business For £4.1 Billion. The Career Advice I Wish I’d Known: Richard Harpin

0:00A Rayo original podcast. When you've got a life's dream, you've got to make it happen. And if you've prepared enough and you've worked hard enough, then you will have that bit of luck and your dream can happen. Today we're talking to someone who grew and sold his business for£4.1 billion. It was one of those rare wow moments in life. Richard Harpin took HomeServe from the brink of collapse to a multi-billion pound success with operations around the world. Literally down to our last£10 ,000, they said, look, you've got to admit this is not going to work. And I knew that I'd find a way through. We'll be learning about the characteristics that make someone a successful entrepreneur.

0:43If you haven't got that resilience, persistence and courage, maybe entrepreneurship is not for you. The failures that come as part of the journey to success. We're taking a£110 million pound right off. And how it's not about the obstacles that get in your way, but the mindset you apply when facing those problems. When there is darkness in the tunnel, you just need to persist. You need to be resilient. You need to keep going and you will find that light. I had to keep going, had to make it. Otherwise, my life would have been unfulfilled.

1:27so richard thank you so much for coming along how are you i'm good uh do tim call me richard you sure i did think that a nice hood might get me a better table in a restaurant and then i found out they make a surcharge but the wrong way where you don't want that anymore but listen i think it's incredibly proud i hope you feel proud of being knowledge in a certain way yes yeah it's one of those things where um uh hopefully we'll open more doors help me to achieve more of my objectives. But it made my mum really proud. Amen. Well, as you can see, my mum's just above you. So that means a lot to me.

2:03I'm so, so interested in what you've got to let us know. But I really want to go back to a point. Listen, you're an entrepreneur, you're a father, you're a sexy dresser. I like the jacket that you're wearing today, right? But take me back to the day that you actually sold the company because you started out humble beginnings to a 4.1 billion exit. Brookfields, your share price through the roof. What was that moment like? It was one of those rare wow moments in life. And I thought, I can't believe that all of those struggles, nearly running out of money twice, taking a£50 ,000 investment back in Newcastle, business called A1 Fast Fix, on a 30-year journey.

2:48And everybody thinks it's easy, but actually, as you know, lots of bumps in the road and lots of mistakes. So to sort of get that, not the end, because it was just the closing of a chapter, but that a great Canadian investor, Brookfield, with a trillion dollars under management, would come and buy HomeSurf for 4.1 billion pounds. it was a great moment. So I love the marketing messages. I love the turnaround from the trillion dollar company, but I'm more interested in what that meant for you. Because let me make it clear, if somebody gave me 40 pounds, I'd be jumping up and down on the table, right?

3:31What was it like for you? Because you talk about the 30-year journey. What did it mean for you? It meant that it was the closing of one chapter in my life and then the opening and opening up of the next. But I think I'm never one on self-congratulation. And the moment really felt like looking back and reflecting on all the mistakes that I'd made, but also the things that I'd learned on that journey. at the nine things I know now that I wish I'd known at the start. And I think if I had, maybe as a team, we could have got there in 15 years rather than 30. Or we could have built a business that was twice as big in 20 countries and with 20 ,000 people.

4:21So that was the important bit, was to take out the learning for the next stage of my journey. So did you not celebrate in any way? Did you not buy a bottle of champagne? What was the thing when the actual deal, the due diligence was completed? I did have a big party for 200 people, flew in some of the teams from my home serve around the world to celebrate all my family and friends over the years. And in Yorkshire, because that's where I was born, that's where my roots are. and it was a multiple party because I thought I'll celebrate my 60th birthday early because that feels really old. So far better to celebrate at 59.

5:11We'll celebrate the amazing sale of HomeServe and also the 30th anniversary of the business. And one of the things that I didn't want to do was to take all the money that I'd made that ended up in my bank account January the 9th in 2023. And that was a sort of big occasion to see that. But it wasn't so much about that. It was saying, HomeServe was my baby, still is, and I want to make sure that it continues to go on and be really successful, that Brookfield benefit from their ownership. So I didn't too much want to celebrate sort of the end, but the new chapter for HomeServe and for my next career.

6:02A good friend of mine, Dean Forbes, he sold a business for a billion and he said after the moment of being ecstatic at reaching a milestone, he actually had a lot of responsibility because it was about the impact it was going to have on other people's lives. That seems similar for you. I think it's a lot of people that sell a business and they have seller's remorse. and so I'd sort of planned a bit over the period from when the I was sitting in checker trade in Portsmouth my phone bleeped share price up 15 percent Brookfield are in the early stages of making an offer for home serve they had to put out that stock exchange announcement and so from there to the actual sale was the best part of a year.

6:52Wow. So I did have time to sort of reflect on what I was going to do next. And my advice for anybody that's selling a business is think before you've sold it what you're going to do next because you might go to the beach for a month and then be bored in the way that I certainly would be. You went to the beach? Only for a couple of weeks. but I'd planned out sort of quite a bit before what was my only skill and how was I going to use that and I'm a bit slow on the uptake I had to go to Harvard Business School for three days to work out what my career objective should be post home serve and all these people came up with these sort of long statements and big plans.

7:47And I came up with two words. Which were? But those words were inspire breakthrough. And I hope if you went to any of the 10 chief execs in Homeserve that ran each of the countries, they were the ones that made it happen and said, what was my part in that? Hopefully they would say, I challenged them and I inspired them. And as a team, we delivered more than we ever dreamt of. So how do you inspire people who are running a big company with P &Ls and responsibilities, et cetera, to keep going when you know your destination is to get to an exit point for 4.1 billion? Yeah, I think have a great business with a really good culture, which is customer focused, have a very tight operating model, which we did in each country for home serve.

8:37It was very similar between America and Germany and Spain and the UK. You get the same level of service wherever you are. But hire great chief execs and give them the autonomy to hire their team and run their business. And then manage them on the results, not on what they are in those situations. Yeah, not on the day-to-day micromanaging. It's saying, this is now your business. You're the leader of it. You run it. run it to this framework, but you make the decisions within that. And I think that was really empowering for the team. So if you entrust those chief execs to be great at what they're doing, what did you say you're great at?

9:15What was your skill? Inspiring them, hiring great chief execs that were a lot better at running the day-to-day than I was. And that was probably, Well, if you boil down the success of Home Serve, I would think it was really identifying that I was a rubbish chief exec, not interested in running the day-to-day, and hiring people that were proven chief execs that could run each of the countries better than me, and then saying, would Home Serve work in another country? And proving out the international playbook, and then opening up in nine other territories. Because that's really interesting for me because there's lots of people who will be watching this who are on their entrepreneurial journey or in a management position and they think they have to do everything and they have to be great at everything.

10:07But you identified early what you weren't so good at and got out of the way of yourself. Where did that come from? Did you have to be told to do it? Did you just naturally know that was the case? I remember sort of over the years having performance reviews with my chairman and the chairman changed a few times over the years and we enforced those twice-a-year performance reviews. And I remember always coming out of those feeling miserable, that I'd only got a couple of strengths and I'd got loads of areas for improvement. And then I had a breakthrough. I learned that actually if we all just focus on our one or two big strengths and hire people to do the things that we don't like doing, that we're not good at, that is the magic model.

10:58Amen, that's true. But listen, I'm chair of a school board, the old school that I went to, the same school that excluded me. And I'm so frustrated we still have an education system that is focused on making people great at everything rather than focusing on their one or two strengths and then doubling down on that. Yeah, focus on your passion. Work out what it is and then go for it. I love that. So that's good. A lot of us focus on the destination, like getting to the end point, exiting the company. When you are at that particular point, you assume that it's going to bring you happiness. Did the 4.1 billion bring you happiness?

11:34It brought me some credentials to say that I've done it. It brought me most of all the lessons on how do you do it? And then said, I need to take my career purpose of inspiring breakthrough and help other entrepreneurs at an earlier stage in their journey. So the exit didn't make you happy? So, yeah, it did. And I thought, wow, that was a great moment. I've got money that gives me freedom in life. I can invest that in other entrepreneurs. set up business leaders and organization to help scale up to grow and so yeah it was it was great but the other bit was I believe in evolution not revolution and I didn't want to walk away from home serve with all that money and leave the team So for a period of two years, I did stay on and move from founder and group chief exec to non-exec chairman.

12:51So you still had a responsibility to the team, you felt? Yeah, that just gave me that sort of a bit of continuity and for the team. And I think that was quite important. If you go from working flat out to then doing nothing, I think you can end up with that seller's remorse. And did you have that? No, because I'd worked out what I was going to do. I stayed and did the chair role. I learned from that. I'm a great believer in learning and training. And so I went and did a, trained as a business coach at INSEAD. 10 days over six months. And I thought it's going to be really difficult for my team and for me in going from a hands-on entrepreneurial founder to non-exec chairman.

13:45And if I train as a business coach, that will help me a bit in terms of stepping back and taking more of a coaching role rather than a very directive role. Have you always been this strategic in your thought process? Because most people, when they're running a business, the size and scale of HomeServe aren't thinking about, okay, what's the transitionary phase? How do I make sure I don't get the seller's remorse? They're just thinking, I've got to run 100 miles to do this and manage all these different things. Have you always been quite strategic in everything that you've done? I think I've learned over the years.

14:17And if I was looking back and said, what advice would I have given myself, then it would be to say that plan out your year on a page and do it over the Christmas period. And you've got to set out, first of all, starting with what's your purpose? Whether you're running a business, whether you're developing a career, whether you want to be successful in a non-business field, it is about saying, what's your purpose? how are you unique and different to somebody else and then write it down on a page and i think we're also focused in the early days of running a business or with a career that we're really really busy we're focusing on the urgent and the important yeah um but we're not focusing on the important and not urgent and that's the crown jewels of how people make it you've got to free up a bit of your time for the thinking and for the strategy and checking that you are delivering your purpose and that you're achieving your plans.

15:36I'm not trying to be everything to everybody right you can't do it it's impossible. So you mentioned before that you if you could tell your younger self you might have done better with the sale you could have done more with the sale does that give the indication that you weren't 100 % happy with what you got in terms of the valuation? No, I was really happy with this. But I was on stage at the Business Leader Summit a few months ago in London, 800 founders and entrepreneurs in the audience. And I was talking about my how to make a billion in nine steps, but not using HomeServe as the case study.

16:18I picked out other businesses that were more successful in home serve. Yep. And I was standing there feeling inadequate that surely I could have built a business with my great team that could have been worth even more, created even more jobs. And I use the example of Belron. Yep. Autoglass in the UK. That was a business that went from a value of 200 million euros in the year 2000 to 24 billion in 2023. And so I still want to learn. And I still want to build more billion pound businesses, ideally some that are worth 10 billion. But that won't be me building them. It won't be me as the chief exec.

17:11I want to help others to do it. So you still want to get the buzz of creating stuff, creating jobs and opportunities, but you want to advise now from a position of having done it before and having the resources to invest in that next stage. Exactly. Helping those entrepreneurs to avoid the mistakes I made. Follow my model for how you build a billion pound business. And even if some of them don't get there, and that's a sort of, it's a big goal, isn't it? But my message for anybody out there, Tim, is you don't need to get to the billion. Aspire to something big and just go for it. And if you really believe in yourself and you hone those characteristics that are important to get there, you will achieve it.

17:59So what do you think are the things that people should be focusing on for the next stage of their businesses, the industry sectors, that could potentially have that billion-dollar opportunity? Yeah, I think there are opportunities in many, many sectors. I'm focused in my investment business growth partner in home serve like businesses so where's the next auto glass or home serve or rent a kill not competing with any of those but finding the next niche which could be a service and depot based business big opportunities in health and longevity, and I think that's a really exciting area. And what I would call Consumer 3.0, which is sort of a membership and service-based retail model, not just selling an individual product.

19:07Or direct-to-customer stuff, yeah. Yeah, and by doing it in an omni-channel way. Lots of businesses online, but right now it's about saying, have stores or pop-ups or sell your products in other people's stores as well as being online. And I think the omni-channel model is really, really important. One of the biggest pulls around entrepreneurship we've done from our research is that people want to change their life through the money that they will make, right? I want you to take us to that point where you'd clocked life, basically. You've got all the money that you could ever imagine, right? Firstly, what was the biggest thing that you bought with that first big successful bit of money?

19:55And did the money actually change you for the better or worse? yeah i um the the big event really was in 2010 yeah when i uh sold a a chunk of my home serve shares uh we'd been a listed company then for six years we'd outgrown our parent water company and we de-merged home serve and listed on the stock market as 300 million pound valuation in 2004 all of my friends and colleagues said sell some shares bank some money de-risk what if it all goes wrong and I ignored them and I went out and borrowed 20 million secured on my home serve listed shares and only was persuaded in 2010 where I paid off my debt and ended up with I think sort of 45 million after I'd repaid that 20 million of borrowings before I paid tax on it.

21:05But that was more than enough to secure the future of my family forevermore. So it was never about going out and sort of buying the big thing. I think it was that feeling of freedom and providing choices. and it was also about de-risking. So I think my advice today to anybody would be do have a de-risk event where you know that if it did ever go wrong, you're not going to be on the street, that you've banked some money, that maybe you have gone and bought your holiday villa or ski chalet or whatever appeals to you and then you can press the accelerate button and go faster. And if you can find the right investor that will help you to de-risk and give you some growth capital, I think that's a really good thing to do.

22:04So I think that event in 2010 did help me to say, right, let's really get on with it. Because then you didn't have to worry about the lower Maslow needs. You could then start focusing on getting to the position of driving the business 100 % without worrying about the roof over your head or the food in the fridge. is that right? Yeah and then when you have made it money goes from becoming a goal and the output of your efforts to the input. So I now say that I've got money that I can put into helping youth enterprise, helping businesses to scale and I've made a really big personal investment in business leader, the organization that provides coaching and provides peer groups and a growth program and building a great team there.

22:58And I'm not doing it because I want to make more money. I'm doing it for that purpose of inspiring breakthrough. But it is a for-profit business because actually there's nothing wrong with that. Nobody should worry about running a business to make money because you can still have one that does that but has a really important purpose. That's true to be. I think there's so many people who think that you can only do good through charities, but actually charities look for surplus. They just call profit a different name, right? So why can't you do it through a for-profit business? Because I believe creating jobs is a good thing.

23:37Making sure that you can solve people's problems. These are all societal beneficial things that come from running a perfectly successful enterprise. And because if you're bringing in the very best people, they will be motivated by wanting to make some money as well as delivering a purpose. So I think running a for-profit organization is actually easier than a not-for-profit or a charity. I agree 100%. So you've always said, and I've heard from the list of things that you've continued to do after the exit, that you're never going to retire. Most people are desperate to just kick up their feet, sit on the beach in our body spugglers, as it were, and then do nothing else.

24:20But you said you're never going to do that. Why? Because I've got a passion for business and I enjoy it every day. I do think now it is about getting more work-life balance than I had, certainly in the early days of home serve and I think it's very difficult then and so I can now choose to have a few more holidays to have the occasional Friday that is thinking time and doing interesting visits but I really love work but most importantly I want to sit with some of those founders and CEOs in five or 10 years time and say, look what you've achieved. And all I did was helped you to avoid the mistakes that I made.

25:08Maybe I put some of my capital into taking a minority investment in your business and you've made it. So it's that, that's the feeling in your heart that says, look at those people that made it. Like the ones that we talked about before we started filming this morning, Tim, on those businesses you helped, the hairdresser that went on to open three salons and made a big success of it. The only reason I do those things or create platforms is because I'm a people pleaser. I wanted to please my mum by getting good exam results, and I was happy when she was happy with me. And that's carried on through everything I've gone on to do.

25:54Because I think people say that money is the root of all evil. I don't believe that. I think money amplifies the person that was already there. So if you were a bad person, you'd be a worse person with more money. And if you're a good person, you end up being a philanthropist and investing in the next stage like you have, right? I think so. Yeah, I'd agree with that. So lots of people have must be sending you business plans all the time and telling you, what are the ones that are most exciting? Not specific businesses, but areas of business that are most interesting for you at the moment. Yeah, these would be, these are going to be businesses that are making between one and five million of EBITDA profit today.

26:32To not turn over actual, yep. Actual profit. They've got a model that is proven. And then it's about how can we help them to scale bigger and faster. So industry agnostic, you don't mind where they come from. Tech, but that would be avoiding the sort of direct AI businesses because the Americans know more about those or some very big operations. So it's picking areas where we've got expertise around consumer, around services, and fitness and leisure. Okay. So a business that we just exited called Synergy, that was a copy of Pure Gym it was an ex-Home Serve colleague that was a regretted loss met him at the Home Serve Alumni Club and I said what are you up to now and Len said we copied Pure Gym that's my step number one copy and pivot so my ears pricked up and I thought tell me more yeah he said low cost gyms haven't been done in a big way in Spain we've set one up it's called Synergym we got 12 gyms open we're looking for an investor to put in 6 million euros for 20 percent and we just sold that business five and a half years later with 160 gyms they're opening a new gym every six days and we got a great financial return on that But more importantly, it was sitting and celebrating with the two founders to say, you made it big.

28:27All I did was believe in you, gave you a little bit of capital, a small amount of guidance, but it was the two of you that made it happen. I don't want to make it seem like it's all roses, though. You talked about some of the bumps along the journey. I want you to take us back to the worst bump, the time when you felt completely out of your depth, when you weren't too sure that the£50 ,000 was going to turn into anything. What was that moment like? What was happening? And how did you navigate that? Yeah, there was a common theme, and that was I was overambitious, looking to grow HomeServe in too many directions at the same time.

29:10And we've got a great business model. utility branded home assistance cover, annual payment, subscription model, great customer service, high retention. Regular income. And so why on earth did I say, let's go and get into furniture warranties for furniture retailers? Why did I say, let's go and do low margin repairs for home insurers when people have a fire or a flood or a break-in? and why should we get into smart home devices? Those are all two steps removed from what we were currently doing. So what I should have done is focused a lot more on the core model and said no, had a not-to-do list.

30:02So one of the biggest bumps was I'd gone and spent$130 million of shareholders' money on buying a series of businesses that were doing repairs for home insurers. Along came e-tendering, and the margins came down. Other businesses were competing for that work from big insurers like Aviva. and we saw millions wiped off our profit in the space of a 45-minute online e-tender auction. All off the back of one of your decisions? Yeah, spending$130 million. And so I'm an honest sort of person and I said, we've got to go and get out of these businesses and sell them. we've got to put our hands up and say to our shareholders and to the stock market, I'm really, really sorry.

31:00I shouldn't have bought all those businesses. And so the day in 2009, when we put out an announcement to say, we're out of the home repairs for insurers, we've just sold the businesses for 20 million that we bought for 130 million, We're taking a£110 million write-off. I said, I'm really sorry. And guess what happened? What happened? Share price on the day went up by£250 million. And why? Because we got out of them proactively. We admitted my mistake. And we focused back on our core magic model of home assistance. so you can get that the lesson is anybody that thinks that uh entrepreneurship is well you set up a business and the next day you sell it for four billion well that is not the reality you said not everybody can be an entrepreneur i do think that you can train and hone some of your personal characteristics.

32:13But ultimately, if you haven't got that resilience and persistence and curiosity and courage and low ego and focus on the growth of the business, not the growth of your own career, then maybe entrepreneurship is not for you. And I think that's why you're one of the few who has done the things you have, because that's a very rare combination. That mix and recipe you just talked about does not exist in many people, right? And you had to go on the journey yourself. One of your non-execs, Stella Davis, she said, she read the early draft of the book, right? And she said clearly that lots of other people had paid the price of the ambition, the decisions that you've just thankfully articulated in such a beautiful way.

32:57But the staff who left after a year, the arguments, the disruption, that part of a business culture sometimes, these things had to happen. But you had to admit that you had to smooth that all over to get the business to grow to the scale it was, what did her feedback as a non-exec make you see? Yeah, I learned that feedback from my chairman and non-execs was really important. And I was actually, my very first chairman, a guy called Lindsay Berry, wrote his memoir. And I read it. and he very kindly called me an entrepreneur of genius, which I don't think is quite true, but I'll take it. You're not going to argue yet.

33:42But then he wrote, HomeServe was doing so well that we didn't challenge Richard on stopping him from going and buying the furniture warranty business and the repair businesses for home insurers. And when I read that, I was genuinely horrified. Why? Because they should have challenged me. They should have said, stick to your core business. Don't go and buy those businesses. Would you have listened? They knew that we shouldn't have done, and they were right, and ultimately it turned out that I was wrong. And I'd have been pissed off for a couple of days, but then I'd have seen sense, and I would have got on with it.

34:29So one of the things I've learned is you need to listen to your non-execs and your chair. Any business should have one or two non-execs or a chairman. They're almost you. You buy a non-exec and you get a mentor for free. But if you're going to do that, then you've got to listen to them. And I do today. I think having mentors is really important. and I look back and I wish I'd listened a bit more. It's important to have a check and balance, but it's also important to have the humility to understand that people know more than you do. Because at the top of the tree, you're surrounded by lots of people who just want to say yes.

35:13So you need someone who's sometimes going to say no. And that danger, the bigger that you become and the more successful you become, it's even more difficult for people to say, No, that's a stupid idea. So it's really important to have humility and to show your mistakes and to always demonstrate that I want to hear Stuart Macon, the chief exec of M &S, doing a great job there. He would call it confronting the unvarnished truth. Well, the team here have no problem telling me I'm an idiot, so we don't know about that, right? that's fine. But your book, you've mentioned it several times. Thank you for sharing it.

36:00And it's a brilliant read. Going through all the chapters, the one that sticks out most to me is step nine in the process, which I'm not going to test you on what it is because you wrote it, but it's about honing your character. And the thing that's come across wonderfully powerfully from you is about how important character is in individuals. Tell me and the people watching, what are some of the characteristics that you think that a person has to have, not to make a billion because not everyone will do, but to be successful? Yeah, the three behaviors and values that I really believe in are persistence.

36:36And things don't come easy, but if you're really determined, then you can make stuff happen. People will say no to a business proposition and eventually they can be persuaded. And many people give up when you need to keep going and you can eventually make it happen. And the second one would be courage. And that's about having the courage of your convictions. And there was a really great business that I found called Checker Trade back in 2016. And we ended up buying the business as the way to evolve home serve and paid an awful lot of money for it. and I had the courage to go to my board and say, we want to pay a ridiculous amount of money to buy the business.

37:30It was only making a million pounds profit at the time. I had the courage to ask and on that occasion, they had the courage to back my recommendation. And Checker Trade today is a fantastic business, a marketplace for trades. It's helping those trades to grow. So it will be one of those next billion pound UK success stories. But we paid a lot of money for it at the time. And so courage. The third one would be integrity. And by that, I don't mean honesty, because hopefully most people in business are honest. But I would call it confronting the brutal facts. Having those honest conversations and debates and addressing the thing that needs to be tackled in the business.

38:24So many people avoid the hard things, don't they? And very often that will be a people issue. How many people out there listening employ somebody that the business has outgrown, that really shouldn't be in the business anymore, that that person helped on the journey, will be successful elsewhere, but they need to get on and tackle that right now, have that kind conversation but need to get on with this. So that would be an example of confronting the brutal fact and exiting somebody in the right way and hiring somebody that can take the business forward. Even anybody that is listening to this and they're not the entrepreneur, they work for an employer.

39:16again it is about confronting those brutal facts of the day-to-day job and having that courage to make a simple change that could make the difference amen i think that's very important but going through the steps most people will be cautious because if it's as simple as following nine steps why doesn't everybody do it right so the question is is it about a process or is it about being in the right place at the right time? Is it a bit more luck than it is about planning? I do believe in luck, but luck only comes from preparation and hard work. It's when preparation and hard work meets opportunity.

40:04I did have a very lucky moment when HomeServe had nearly run out of cash for the second time. We'd burned through the half a million pounds that South Staff's Water put into the business, literally down to our last£10 ,000. And there were 23 people in the business, all knew that they're about to be made redundant. The water company were going to shut down the business. And somebody called me and said, there's a little water company in Surrey and they've developed plumbing insurance. I got in my car, drove down to Surrey and interviewed some people on the street that had bought the product, copied it, improved it, and that became the home-served model.

40:50That was a stroke of luck. And even my business partner had come to me and said, Richard, your life dream from the age of four when you saw Lord Hanson's helicopter land in the garden of the big house at the end of the cul-de-sac in Huddersfield where I was born, that dream of being a successful entrepreneur is over. You've run out of luck. You've run out of money twice. You better go back and work for Procter & Gamble. And you know what? When you've got a life's dream, you've got to make it happen. And if you've prepared enough and you've worked hard enough, then you will have that bit of luck and your dream can happen.

41:33So at no point did you ever believed that it wasn't going to happen? No. I had to keep going, had to make it, otherwise my life would have been unfulfilled. So there's no choice, there was no other option, you had to do it. Yeah. People, you were crazy. Yeah. They said, look, you've got to admit this is not going to work. And I knew that I'd find a way through. When there is darkness in the tunnel that you just need to persist. You need to be resilient. You need to keep going and you will find that light. But it may be that you need to copy. You need to pivot. You need to drop an idea and just sort of change it.

42:19You shouldn't doggedly go on determinedly if you haven't got the right idea. You need to be open to copying somebody else's model pivoting, doing market research until you find the way through. Have you always been like that since you were four-year-olds watching a helicopter? Just dogged determined. Yeah, and my apprenticeship was selling white rabbits to my school friends age five, running a rabbit kennels, becoming a children's magician. You're selling rabbits. How did you do that? When I left Huddersfield when my dad got promoted in the civil service and we moved to Newcastle. Then my grandfather gave me a white rabbit as a leaving present.

43:07And I'd been inspired by Lord Hanson and his helicopter and said, I want one of those one day. And so I thought I need to start running a business and making money and buying a second rabbit and breeding them and selling the offspring was that first business. I love this. You literally bought two rabbits, had them in a cage, and then we're selling whatever came out. But then you've got a one-off sale. I then need to figure out how do I make money out of those friends and figured out that they go on holiday once a year and they can bring the rabbit to me and I'll run a rabbit kennels and make more money from looking after the rabbit for two weeks than I did selling them the rabbit in the first place.

43:51And what was your home like at the moment? Were your parents supportive of all this whole endeavour? We'd got some outbuildings and got some wire cages on these old hospital bed stands. And that was the rabbit kennels. So how much were you selling a rabbit for? I think it was about 25p at the time. I remember when I was nine years old, then doing two children's birthday parties, doing a 30-minute magic show. That was 50p. Wow, so you're renting out the rabbits now. So that was three times what my weekly pocket money at the time was. And how much was you trying to store and keep the rabbits? I can't honestly remember, but I think it was more than I'd sold the rabbit for in the first place.

44:47So immediately you're thinking about a lifetime value of a customer at four or five years of age. You are a genius. Far from it. Anyway, I'm impressed with that. I like that. I like that. So you've already mentioned about young people and the next generation. So that person who is now 14, they're not four anymore, they're 14, they're thinking about careers. You're a great advocate of apprenticeships. Why is that important for you? Because it's learning a skill. It's an alternative to going and doing a degree and taking on a lot of student debt. So I think we need more apprenticeships in the UK.

45:26The apprentice numbers are declining rather than growing, and we've got to turn that around. We need more of those technical skills in this country. But equally, going and setting up a business. But if you said, is there a magic age for doing that, then the average age that people start a business is, and I was surprised by this, is 42 years old. What that says is people have worked for somebody else. They have learned. I can't underestimate the three and a half years that I did at Procter & Gamble in marketing, learning about marketing. I was the brand assistant on Fairy Liquid, which is why my hands are still so soft.

46:16Learning every day, learning marketing, learning how to run a business. So if you said, what's the right age? Ideally, you'd have worked for somebody else, but you do it before you take on a big mortgage. You have kids, and therefore you've got time and money to try and get the business off the ground before you have those other responsibilities. Love it. Talking of responsibilities, I want to read you something because the nine chapters are really important, but I want to read something to you. It's the dedication in your book, right? It says, To my children, for the days I didn't always make it home for bedtime and to Kate for bringing them up so well, to my mother and brother for helping with the early business ventures and to everyone who has worked at HomeServe for your hard work and commitment in building an amazing business.

47:13Why did you make that the dedication of your book? um because uh it was all the people around me that uh that helped and because um i had to make sacrifices in my early family life um i wasn't there for tea time uh every day um i would leave the house at 5 25 every morning so i'd never see the kids um get up and have breakfast um Do I look back and regret that? No, because my kids saw me work really hard. They are not privileged kids that take money for granted. They're all working really hard in life and very proud of them. And the only thing I can do now is say I don't buy them material gifts.

48:10I buy them experiences. and so it's making up for time by uh doing stuff with them so um i know with my children so i've had to make equal sacrifices just yesterday um my son is preparing to go for a karate competition in poland um he'll be competing for a national competition in poland but i know i've got a very important meeting with a financier that I can't cancel. I don't regret it because I know what the investment is, but I also know that work-life balance doesn't exist because I have to do that because of the things I'm responsible for as a father. Are there things that you have in a similar way that you regret or wish you had changed in your journey?

48:59Yeah, there was one occasion where I thought I must be at parents' evening at school in York. And my business... Well, you went to university, yes? Yeah, but my business was based north of Birmingham. And the only way that I could make that parents' evening was getting permission from the school to land my helicopter on the school playing fields. And I wish I hadn't done this. I did make parents' evening, but my kids were horrified. they didn't want their uh their friends to know that their dad had a helicopter that was far too flash and um uh so that's a wish that i hadn't made it to parents evening at least not in the helicopter i can imagine the conversations the next day for them would have been quite interesting right um but you will definitely remembered everything will be forgotten right so do you do you look back and wish you could change anything along the journey with regards to family no i don't no i think um uh had um a great family life got three amazing kids we do a lot together um uh they're really sporty i wasn't sporty in early life five as i've got older i've uh freed up more time and obviously have the most time now even though still working full time.

50:28But my challenge this year is half Ironman Triathlon with all three of my kids. And you want to beat them, don't you? 21, 24 and 26. And I'm reconciled to coming fourth. I want to try and just finish it and be there in Berlin in middle of September taking part with them. God bless you. I wish you the best. I hope you win as well because that would be quite good at the tea table, right? But here's the tension I can't get past, right? Your advice to young entrepreneurs specifically is to pour all of their time and effort into the work they do because as an investor, as a business owner yourself, you know that is incredibly important to make something work.

51:09But then the thing that you regret is exactly the things that you have to let go because you're pouring in 100%. So which is it? What do you actually think the person who's going to make it needs to do? If you want to have a balanced life between family, friends, leisure, and work, then I'd recommend that you stay as an employee and that you don't take the risk and the sacrifices of being an entrepreneur. Even as a chief exec, if you're a paid chief exec, then not always easy to get that work-life balance. And particularly for entrepreneurs in the founders phase, that phase which might be the first five to seven years of figuring out the business getting the right model scaling it bringing in the right people then uh you're not going to get that that balance in life and you've just got to suck it up um uh then uh you should follow the advice of hiring your replacement yeah bringing in a proven chief exec that doesn't mean you're leaving the business, but you're working on the business rather than in it, working out what your role should be.

52:26And that's the time that you could then start saying, I can get a bit more balance. I can spend a bit more time on friends and family. You talk very passionately about frameworks and processes. It's quite a strategic way that you apply decisions to be made and actions you take as a result. What's the key frameworks that have formed your success, you think? And what are the ones that you advise aspiring entrepreneurs to follow to be successful? I think it is having that one-page vision and strategy and plan for a year, not put too much on it, but you've got to have that personal plan on what you want to achieve.

53:09And then write down what your disappointments were, what your achievements were and what you learned and go again for the following year. Applying that same principle in business is about knowing what are the key performance indicators that you and your team need to look at every week and every month. Having that weekly management meeting where you're together for an hour and you're discussing the business performance, what happened last week, what are you going to do, what are you going to change? that's the sort of uh the modus operandi for the business so making sure that you've got metrics which measure what's actually moving and then being to your point courageous enough to acknowledge that they might not be going the right direction and fix those exactly see i'm listening you see i do this final question for me someone listening to this right now um where they are in their journey before anything's worked out they're at the beginning starting what's your advice that you would have given to yourself at that very early stage?

54:16You've gone past selling rabbits for magic shows and you just started a business. What are you advising someone to do? I would find a role model. Who's the person that you want to be like and you want to copy? That might just be a career. If you're in your 20s and you're thinking, well, I don't want to be an entrepreneur, but I do want to be a paid chief exec, then find some role models. Go onto LinkedIn and find those people. And then use one of those life skills of persistence and track that person down and try and persuade them to be your mentor. So that would be my bit of advice. I'll be a carbon copy and then put your own little spin on it.

55:11So Richard, it's been an amazing conversation, but I just want to finish out with some quickfire closing questions. So I want to focus more on the courageous integrity side of your three, but I'm going to be persistent in getting through the following six questions. So I just want to say the first thing that comes into your mind, don't overthink it, just go with it, right? If you had to restart tomorrow with nothing, what would you do? I would buy a business rather than set one up. And I would buy it with vendor finance, borrow the money from the person that is selling it. That is lower risk. And you've got a starting point.

55:48Love that. So don't have to start from scratch because everyone believes they have to create something new. Okay, good. What's one aspect of your career that you would redo? Yeah, the one aspect of my career that I'd redo would be staying more focused, not going and doing acquisitions that were two steps removed from what we were currently doing. So it's having that not-to-do list and being much more disciplined. No trips to Brazil. Exactly. What's one core belief that you've had to reconsider?

56:25that it's not about the idea how many people do we hear that say oh i had a great business idea but then i researched it and somebody else had done it so i didn't do it because actually if somebody's already doing it that's a tick that's great all you need to do is just do it bit better so it's you don't need a big original idea love that final question for me what do you still have left to rework is helping create the next seven and a half thousand large companies through inspiring breakthrough from my growth program and that's the big bit of focus for me and the business leader team over the next three to five years.

57:18So Richard, it's been an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for your time. Thanks, Tim. God bless you. What a brilliant conversation we just had with Sir Richard. Here are the three things that I want you to take away from our conversation. The first one, which really stuck with me, said, you don't have to see the end, you just have to believe in it. All too often, many of us don't know the destination and where we want to end up, but we have to have the confidence that they were going in the right direction. The next thing he talks about was don't be afraid to own your mistakes. That's incredibly important because you're going to make them, but just acknowledge what they are, own them, and then the benefits could be, like him,$250 million.

57:59The final one was the one that really, really landed with me. He said the three key personality traits that you need to be successful are perseverance, courage, and importantly, integrity. If something from this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone that you know who wants to rework their career or their life. And don't forget to like and subscribe for more conversations just like this one. See you next time.