The CEO That Sold His Company For £1 BILLION: Dean Forbes

0:00I realize it's been a few minutes since you've heard a ZipRecruiter ad, and I know you're probably chomping at the bit to hear another one. So, here goes. Only this one is different. I'm not gonna tell you about ZipRecruiter's matching technology or their new feature that connects employers with interested, qualified candidates fast. Instead, on behalf of ZipRecruiter, I'm going to give this time back to you. Do with it what you will. Relish it. Let it really sink in.

0:42wasn't that nice okay now that you're back if you really want to maybe you could go to ziprecruiter.com zip to try it for free which is the same price as some much needed quiet time again that's ziprecruiter.com zip I don't leave anything to chance and I don't compromise on my discipline. I am 100 % accountable for everything that happens to me and around me. Dean's the most influential black leader in the UK. How have you achieved big successes? It's the benefit of knowing your average. I figured out success was going to come through hard work. I've got a pound and I've got an hour. Spend your time on the things that matter.

1:25Somebody's listening to this. What are you saying to that person so they're not complacent? you can only be as good as your own body of work. Like do the hard yards, get the ego out of the way. Maximising your potential is something we should all strive to do. So I learned to read body language, emotional intelligence. And these are the things that give me an edge. So somebody is sitting there thinking, I'm coming from the wrong postcode, I didn't go to the right school. But I don't like this disadvantage thing. If you're in the room that you shouldn't be in, you're already at an advantage. If you win, the scale of that victory is much larger.

1:59You said, I want to do one deal for a billion. Are you happy? I'm Dean Forbes, and today I'm reworking with Tim Campbell. What are the unwritten rules of getting ahead?

2:26Hi, Tim here and welcome to Reworking. As you know, on this show, I sit down with some inspirational people to help answer the questions that really matter to you about work and help you succeed on your own terms. This episode is all about the unwritten rules of getting ahead at work and how to follow them. Dean Forbes is a successful businessman regarded as one of Britain's most successful private equity and enterprise software CEOs. We speak about the power of disadvantage, the art of negotiation, and the lessons he's learned from multiple major business exits. If you're looking for advice, inspiration, and practical takes on how to get ahead, this one's for you.

3:05I'd love to hear your thoughts on the conversation. So if anything resonates with you, please let me know in the comments. Dean. Tim. You're in the house. I'm so grateful for you coming in and putting the time today. It's going to be good. Good conversation. Good to be here, man. Ready to go? Yeah, ready. All right. So you are known as the turnaround specialist, the man who's the king of exits after achieving big deals with people like American Express and others. And also, as most recently, been named as the most influential black leader in the UK. So I want to understand, how have you achieved all of these big successes?

3:44It's been a long journey, Tim. It's been a long journey. and sometimes with the advancement of social media and the media in general, it can make things look like they happened like just in a moment of time or small amount of time. It's been a 20-year step-by-step, brick-by-brick, failure-by-failure, occasional win-by-win journey. And yeah, look, I'm very proud of what I've been able to achieve. I've been incredibly helped, incredibly supported, but it's just been, it's hard work. It's a classic fundamental hard work. Graf, but I remember we had a conversation. We sat down in the middle of COVID and you said, listen, I've done all these lovely stuff, but I want to do one deal.

4:27I want to do one deal for a billion. You didn't know what the company was. You didn't know where it was, but you knew that that was the target. And now sitting here, you've achieved that. How did you do that? Well, I've always been a person that can kind of look a little bit past where they're sat at the moment, right? So growing up, I never imagined I would be leading a big part of a software company like I was able to do with Primavera. And then we sold Primavera to Oracle for$550 million. I was part of the leadership team that did that. And I wanted to challenge myself again. And so I became CEO of KDS.

5:02We sold that to American Express in a nice big deal. And I wanted to look past that, right? That was a good deal. It was a certain size. I wanted to see if I could do something a little bit bigger. and that's always been uh kind of my approach what what's next what does the next floor look like what does the next room look like and after three exits accumulatively they were valued at a billion yep so when we had that conversation i was like i think the next thing i'd like to do is prove to myself more than anything that i could be the leader of a company that could transact uh for a billion euros so that that was kind of how i set my set my sights on it and why why was that so important to you?

5:41Because for most people who are listening, getting one deal of the size or magnitude of any of the ones that you talked about before would have been sufficient. That would have been the poster. That would have been the book. That would have been the podcast. But you said, no, I'm not finished yet. I want to go again. And it's not easy because people may misconceive it's easy. It definitely hasn't been easy. But I think it's a combination of always wanting to challenge myself. Like firstly, I just feel incredibly grateful to be in this position, to have these opportunities. And I think maximizing your potential is something we should all strive to do.

6:19So part of it is me saying, well, what can I do next? If I was able to do that, can I do something else? The other part of it is you kind of do one and you go, well, there's a lot of stuff I didn't know. And I learned a lot of stuff doing that transaction. And that came out okay. So now I know that stuff. Now I've got that experience. Now I've got those contacts. What does the next one look like? Then on the next one, I learned more and I became more aware and I built new connections and I built a new team. And I thought, well, now I'm better than I was before. So what does the next one look like, right?

6:50So at each point, it's a bit testing myself. It's a bit, I'm so grateful to be here. I just want to kind of take as much off of the table as I can. And then, yeah, there's a little bit of pride and ego that creeps in at the end that says, well can the next number be a little bit bigger than the last one i think we're all like that a little bit aren't we 100 i know i am i know you are too actually so you're not supposed to give away the secrets too quickly right but looks at there's somebody's listening to this and they've just got their first job after university they've just got their first promotion into into leadership they've just become ceo what are you what are you saying to that person so they're not complacent so they do kick into that gear because some people can just rest on their laurels two things for me And sometimes I see people, you know, find themselves in a good spot, whether it's a job, a business they've started, a leadership position.

7:40And they start with these five and 10 year plans. And especially with younger people, mid 20s, you know, maybe early 30s, putting these five year, 10 year horizons on their careers. And I think it's good to have medium term aspirations for sure. But I always manage my career by the next thing in front of me. So when I was a sales manager, I wanted to become a sales director. I was a sales director, I wanted to become a sales VP. I just wanted to conquer the next thing in front of me. And when we sold KDS to American Express for 125 million, I thought, well, what does 250 look like? When it was 250, I thought, what does a billion look like?

8:18So it was always like the next thing in front of me. And the second part of that, I think, is the curiosity and the drive to learn and emulate to make myself better so in every situation i'm going i'm not a sales vp yet because i don't have the skills so what are the skills okay it's presentation it's managing people is negotiating i need to get those skills right now i've got them what next okay now it's business planning now it's strategic thinking okay he's really good at that she's really good right so just like accumulating skills to try to get myself to the next level and i only ever think about like the next level, like one step at a time.

9:00Have you always had that self-auditing ability? Because that's quite a unique skill to look at a gap and say, I need to fill it rather than what I've seen lots of people do, ignore the gaps and just focus on what they're comfortable with. It's the benefit of knowing your average or knowing you don't have any God-given skill or talent. For me, I came to peace with that very early, right? So once I came to peace with the fact I didn't really think I had this God-given talent in one area or another, I figured out success was going to come through hard work and developing those skills. And I just looked for people around me who I thought were good representations of those skills.

9:46And I watched and copied and followed and emulated until I felt like I kind of understood it a little bit. Can you give us the earliest example of when you did that? I would talk about Charles Phillips at Oracle, right? Charles was the president of Oracle at the time. Oracle was then and still is one of the world's leading technology companies. And I remember when we sold Pervere to Oracle, and I was in Oracle for a period, just being bewildered by the guy, like the way he walked, the way he talked, the way he dressed, the way he would address people. I just looked at this guy and thought, this is what an executive leader statesman should look and behave like.

10:28And I copied him. What age were you at this time? I was 27. 27 at that time. Later in life, when I was CEO of Core HR, we sold Core HR to the Access Group. And I remember in that negotiation, Chris Bain, the CEO of Access, said, look, we want to do the deal, but we want you to be part of the deal. and I was struggling a lot with working for somebody because I'd been a CEO by that point for maybe 11 years. So I was struggling because I didn't want to work for anybody. So everybody said, look, just go and spend some time with Chris. I knew him, so go and spend some time with him and I expected to go and have to present myself to Chris.

11:08But when I got there, Chris opened up his business plan for the next five years and he said, this is why I think you want to be part of Access Group. This is why I think it would be good if you'd be part of Access Group. and he gave me a 45 minute presentation of his business plan and in that 45 minutes I learned more about business planning than I'd learned in the last five years and probably learned in the next five years and 90 % of what I learned in that 45 minutes it's still the foundations I use today so when I see good if I see good and I think that looks like it works or has been successful I've got no problem you know, added it into my kit bag.

11:50But why wouldn't you? I don't know. Sometimes people get a bit prideful about copying or emulating. I think there's a place for it, isn't there? So someone who's listening, who's at the beginning of their career and has aspirations to climb up the ladder, what's your advice to them from both the perspective of seeing what you learned with the business plan in that one meeting to the person who was willing to carry the laptops and the projectors? What's your advice to that person about how they progress? I think you have to be curious and hungry to learn and hungry to add more to your arsenal. I operate on a basis I'm still not good enough and I'm not yet at the best I can be.

12:35So I'm always trying to accumulate, get more, learn more, get another skill. Then I think the other part of that though, Tim, is you don't have to be everybody. So take the best bit from you. Like learning can also be, I watched how you manage people and I just don't think that's right for me. That's not going to work for me. And I watched how you manage people and the way you talk to people is really good, but the way you assess their performance, I don't quite like. There's learning in, you know, what not to do. And there's learning in, this fits my style and this is who I am. And this, I can authentically do that, right?

13:11That's also learning. I do a lot of work with people where they come and shadow me or spend time with me. And I really try and encourage them. So look, take the bits that will work for you because this is what works for Dean, right? You just have to take the bits that work for you. But I do think it starts with an honest appraisal of where you are. There's a lot that sits underneath that though in terms of the hours and work that you put in. you've often talked about work being in an addiction and how much you invest into the successes you have so let's not try and gloss over it at this you just wake up and this happens right there's a lot of hours that go behind the scenes for somebody who's thinking about this do they really have to get to grips with how hard and how much they have to invest into potentially get into where they are and is that always a good thing today there are more people who become successful and or rich in a short space of time than there was 10 years ago and there was 20 years ago i think that is factually correct i think sustainable success you have to be extremely talented extremely lucky and if you're not one of those two I think you have to be prepared to put the yards in, the work in over a long period of time.

14:34Everybody I admire who I think is institutionally successful, like successful beyond doubt by most measures of success, has a 10, 15, 20-year story. So if I'm early in my career, I would start to get comfortable with the fact that it's going to take a lot of time. It's going to take hard work. it's going to take discipline it's going to take uh focus and then yeah talent and uh luck come along the way but those are the those are the the foundation i don't know many people meaningfully successful for whom that wasn't the case so hard work's the entry and then you wait for the opportunities and that's where a bit of luck sometimes comes in but you have to earn the right to be lucky in the first place yeah i think so and even now i'm working harder now than you know 10 than 10 years ago like i'm i'm doing more uh now because i don't want opportunities to pass to pass me by that and i don't know how you feel about this but i think there is a a little shift in society now and a little shift in generations coming up where sometimes the body language is more to be served and more for you know who is doing this for me who is making this opportunity available to me who is walking me into those um rooms and yeah those of us further on have some responsibility to do that but those of us hungry for those opportunities have to keep putting ourselves in the position to be given those opportunities or to be ushered into those rooms or into those conversations like the the balance of work and responsibility is on those who want and need not on those who have and can give in in my opinion so what's the code then is it about because we're in a position where we can provide privilege to lots of people in our immediate circle, in our networks, our families.

16:24Does that make it easier or harder for them to be successful then if they don't have a safety net? Because I think, I know not having a safety net meant I had to put in the hours. There was no one waiting to catch me, but we know there's lots of people around who are relying on a safety net and maybe don't take as many risks as a result. It's the hardest part of parenting for me and I think for you as well, right? So, you know, we developed hunger, motivation, aspiration through absence. It was the trainers we didn't have. It was the parties we couldn't go to, the holidays we couldn't go on, that created the driving us to say, okay, I want a different life for myself and I want a different life for my kids.

17:09Then we have kids in the situation. We're both very fortunate, you know, very blessed, very lucky. We've worked too. we have to create hunger drive determination in kids who have an unbelievable safety net like they just have unbelievable whether we like it or not admit it or not they've got this unbelievable safety net so the challenge to parent and create that drive is different it's new for us but I try to put into my kids and people like younger people I work with that you know you can only be as good as your own body of work because even as a privileged child with a safety net what happens to you if that safety net vanishes if you don't have work ethic if you don't have integrity uh if you're not morally strong if that safety net goes you're you're very exposed so that's what i tried to put into my kids and other young people i feel very important social mobility isn't incumbent that you have to always start from nothing actually social mobility means everybody can move up proportional to where they are and what they have so i think the the privilege doesn't really concern me the thing that lots of people will often talk to you about though is the rags from riches story and i don't want to get into all of that because i think it's been done to death right but for anyone not familiar with your background just give them an idea of where because they only see this end point just give them the bit that started in catford where where where are we at what are we talking about yeah we um so i grew up mostly in lewisham and and catford uh it's an unfortunately classic story for young men like me you know single parent mom two younger brothers uh i learned in my early 20s how poor we were because my mom did a brilliant job of of masking that and we um we lost our home twice along the way uh as well so yeah a lot of financial hardship growing up in places which are a lot easier to visit now than they were back in the day back in the day but what did that give you in terms of advantages oh man the ultimate advantage and I this is I was having this conversation the other day about disadvantaged background okay and I was saying explain to me the basis on which my background is a disadvantage tell me what that is and the person explained dual parent household I grew up in a single parent household economically not as comfortable as this and academic qualification so I didn't go as far in the academic system schooling system as they did and then a lot of environmental elements of what was going on so cool we take all of that my response to that is well what about the cultural education I got because I grew up next door to a Turkish family I grew up living above an Indian family I grew up around African immigrants.

20:11So in this melting pot of culture, I smelt different foods from early age. I heard people talk different languages. I knew words in different languages before you in your advantaged position started to take language courses in school. So I grew up in that environment. I grew up in an environment where if somebody in the block had milk, then we all had milk. And if somebody in the block had money, then we all had money. and we grew up around a partner scheme where everybody in the environment would put a certain amount of money into a pot on Friday and that money so I learned about community before you were educated on that but then I learned you know more nuanced skills so I learned to read body language and I learned emotional intelligence before it became fashionable to talk about those things I remember being trained in my corporate life on emotional intelligence and body language and negotiating.

21:12And it was funny to me in that lesson, and it was funny to me in that conversation, talking about disadvantage, because when I used to get the... I used to live in Catford. Yeah. And I used to play for Millwall. The first professional club I ever played for was Millwall when I was like 12 or 13. I lived in Catford. To get to Millwall training in Bermondsey, I had to get on a bus in Catford. Yeah. I had to go through Lewisham. New Cross, Peckham, then Bermondsey. And for anybody familiar with the area and London, that's like three, at least, maybe more now, at least three different gang territories, right?

21:49Just to get to football. At least, yeah. And I was going on that bus three times a week. So if we want to talk about emotional intelligence and negotiating, when you get to Lewisham and the Lewisham boys get on the bus, you need to figure out quickly, do I know them? Do I recognize them? Who are they? okay these guys are cool i know them this is going to be all right then they get off the bus then you get to new cross and you don't know these boys who get on the bus and they say haven't we seen you in peckham yeah this is the first sign of danger that very question alone is the first sign of danger so now you're assessing how much danger and now you have to decide is the best thing to do to confront this and meet it head on to show i'm not scared or is the best thing to do to cower and and let it happen and let them maintain the upper hand right and then you get to Peckham where did you get on the bus in New Cross no I got on in Catford and then you're going okay good I know this guy he plays in my district football team we've played football together before so now I need to remind him remember that game we played remember you scored that goal was unbelievable like you're gonna so now we're friends and the other guy and this is one way and that's in nanoseconds and this is in this is in nanoseconds there's other times on that journey people get on the bus and move forward three seats the doors open and you wait just before they're going to close and you run off of the bus because we know you can feel it so when you're training me on emotional intelligence and reading body language it's great to put a beautiful framework around it but I honed these skills in a different environment where the consequences were different to what you're now being educated on so there's all of that plus my resilience plus my tolerance plus my ability to deal with, these are things I learned long before.

23:39And these are my advantage. These are the things that give me an edge in my corporate life today. These are the reasons when people now say I'm successful, those are my foundational skills. So you tell me who has the advantage. And the person didn't respond afterwards other than to say, I might have a point, but I don't like this disadvantage thing because most of my advantages most of the things I rely on when it's going terribly what skill set do I go back to when it's going brilliantly what skill set has enabled that it's those things

24:18so you're saying the start for you actually gave you skills before you even knew they were skills and now you've refined them over such a long period of time they're at a peak they don't need anymore because that's innate into who you are as a person so somebody you're sitting there thinking I'm an outsider, I'm an imposter, I'm coming from the wrong postcode, I didn't go to the right school. What's your advice to them? The liberation of that starting point is unbelievable. Just the freedom that it gives you and has given me. If you're in the room that you shouldn't be in, with somebody whose education, financial background, parenting, in has enabled them to be in that room but you shouldn't your your background didn't you know give you the basis to be in that room you're already at an advantage you're not supposed to be there the the uh pressure for victory is not on your side of the table it's on their side of the table with that education with that parenting with that upbringing they're supposed to win they're supposed to kill you every single time so when you don't when you're not defeated you've won if you win if you win the scale of that victory is much larger and that should give you a degree of freedom to move and operate people say sometimes do you get imposter syndrome and I say well no because I wasn't supposed to be here this wasn't supposed to happen so you find a ticket to Disneyland on the floor and you go in, you can only have a good time.

26:02Like nothing bad can happen because you weren't supposed to be here. Like you kind of nicked your way in. So I'm having a way of a time. Way of a time because we're in the room. Right. I love it. Because the thing is, I remember the days like being with my mum and like being given all this responsibility and hating it, hating it at that time because I was the oldest child. I was like, why do I have to look after these two? Why do I have to go and do the shopping? I remember one time she gave me 20 pounds and I lost the money along the way. Worst thing in the world. Worst thing in the world because that was a big thing in our household.

26:35And I spent hours searching around the streets. But all of those things have made me the person that I am. I don't take nothing for granted. You have a similar experience. 100%. You know, COVID is a good example of that. And listen, COVID was just an incredible time and a lot of people suffered financially, physically, mentally. So I'm not making light of the deep impact and quite negative impact that COVID had on a lot of people. But for me, I'm going through COVID with my family. And again, we're in a very fortunate position. But the uncertainty of food, delivery of food, what's going to happen tomorrow?

27:13How will we get out of this? It was my life, like 12 to 16, right? I remember my mum doing food shopping at the beginning of the month. and she would always say to us, eat the perishables first, then eat the tin stuff, then eat the dried stuff, right? Because she never knew when we were shopping again. So it was like, don't eat the oven chips and ketchup first because then the cabbage and carrots will go off. So you eat the perishable first, then you eat the tin stuff second, then you eat the dried stuff first. So when I'm going through COVID, my wife's looking at me going, this guy is a maniac.

27:48Like he's an absolute maniac because I'm arranging all of the food going, right perishables are here tin stuff to the front of the cupboard in day order and I'm looking and going right we've got about five weeks of food here seven if we're under pressure it was automatic wasn't it it just kicked in it just kicked in and Daniel's looking at me going this guy is a weirdo he's an absolute weirdo but I was comfortable in Covid because I knew how to manage it right and again it's this notion of of disadvantage I've been in an environment situation that has prepared me for life just in an incredible, incredible way.

28:25Amen. I love to mum and stuff. I love to mum. But there's people who are watching this now, though, who are in the positions we started. They're in those postcodes. They're navigating those bus rides and they understand that perishable stuff should be used first and they still feel that they're never going to make it. What's the difference for you that you're saying to them? Is it that you're lucky or that you just work harder? I think people who have worked with me would say I have a very, very high work ethic and a very high drive. And I'm proud of that. I am very disciplined. I'm extremely disciplined and I'm extremely structured.

29:11You know, Fortero is now 3 ,000 people plus. I run that company on a very, very known and established framework and I stick to that framework. I know what everybody knows, what Dean reviews or what we review weekly, monthly, quarterly, half yearly, annually. Everybody's clear what the deck is, what the format is, what the targets are. Targets are very important because they're a measure of how well the business is performing relative to capital allocation. And that's a very structured framework I used to run for Tera. but I use a similarly structured framework to run my life. I put my clothes out.

29:49I have help, but I put my clothes out on Sunday night all the way until Wednesday. If I'm traveling, I pack my bag on Sunday night. My diary is precise with how I spend my time. Journey times, documents that I needed, if I need to travel, it's printed off. I don't leave anything to chance in my preparation and I don't compromise on my discipline. And that helps me because now my brain is left to focus on the task at hand and not all of this stuff around the edge. So I'm very, very disciplined. And I think, you know, today I'm lucky because I have a lot of people that help me manage that discipline.

30:33But I don't think discipline is a financially enabled talent or behavior. anybody can be disciplined and structured and think about how you can make yourself more efficient so you can put more into being good at the thing you care about so tim i think that's one thing the other thing is i am a hundred percent accountable for everything that happens to me and around me like i'm a hundred percent accountable no excuses i know you've you've known me 20 years you've never heard me say that person didn't give me they screwed me out of they tried they tricked me um you've never heard me i don't blame anybody else when you could quite easily sometimes never no everything is is my fault like if it went badly it's it's my fault if it went well it's probably a collection of contributions one of which was mine but if it's not gone it's my it's my fault i never blame anybody else i'm never and i always look back at situations that didn't go well for me and i said what could i have done differently what should i have done what should i have done differently i'm always accountable and that is built definitely on an ego that believes i can control everything and i know i can't but i operate on the basis that that i can right i actually can control everything you know if this if this isn't well viewed i'm not going to blame you or these guys my answers weren't good what did i do i should have said that why didn't i make make that point like everything is my is my responsibility see and i love that because the fact is lots of people give too much energy to things that they can't change or control and you can ultimately change and control yourself right that's the only thing you can really control whether it's in your relationship whether it's in your job whether it's with friends whatever they do is on them but what you do how you respond and it comes back to that self-auditing thing again you have that innate ability to self-audit yourself it starts with you and i think there's lots of books that like talk about starting with yourself right it starts with with you for sure but then you have a sphere of influence you have a sphere of um impact and you have to be mindful of of using that right so i'll give you another example people who use this analogy that we all wake up on monday morning with 10 000 points for the week to use on the things we care about the people we love people we care about our interests our jiu-jitsu our music our gym running socializing everything right got 10 000 points and you have to decide where you're gonna how you're gonna deploy those points so when you get in the car in the morning and i'm driving to work and somebody crosses over they stop on the yellow zigzag grid grid and now I can't pass and I'm beeping, they're beeping and this is about to become road rage.

33:28I just go, hold on a minute. It's going to cost me some of my points. Yeah, can't use that. You can't get my, because then I'm going to get involved in this and give you some of my points and I'll get to first day and be depleted. I've got no more points to use. Because I used them all in all this nonsense stuff. And that is one of the ways I keep myself centered on spend your time on the things that matter and on the things that you can influence for your uh your greater good you've also said that you stick to one thing you don't try and do lots of different things which is very different for me personally right you say listen i know this system this process this type of business because i've got pattern recognition now and why would i do something else when i have to learn against somebody else who's an expert and they've got better pattern recognition than me.

34:16Why is that so important? Because people are often told, just do as many things as you can to say yes to all the opportunities. And you say no to more things than you say yes to. For kind of my serious core professional pursuits, I stick to what I'm good at. I experiment a lot in other things. And again, I learned, like we've got Severin, a wine brand now. I'm learning a lot about business, physical good, you know, dispatch returns. It's an interesting lesson. but for core I stick to what I'm good at and what I know because I've got some units I can put into things I've got a pound and I've got an hour so do I want to put do I want to lose half of that hour learning something totally new or do I want to use some of that hour becoming better at what I already knew I want to do the latter and if I've got a pound do I want to put in a place where I'm uniquely able to determine the likelihood of return?

35:15Or do I want to put it somewhere where it's complete speculation? I've just decided I don't want to do that. And it's worked out well for me. I think there's a premium on a spike. A person who is really good at one thing, like really good, I think will out-earn and out-perform a person who is six or seven at many things. Love that. One of your key skills, Dean, is your ability to negotiate. You like a deal. You like making a deal, right? Everyone talks about KDS and the exits you've had into big companies that we've already touched on. Tell us about your style of negotiation and when maybe a negotiation hasn't gone as well as you anticipated.

36:02I've learned a lot in terms of negotiating. I think as I've got older and I've got a bit more mature, I would like to think I've got better at it. I mean, there's a misconception with negotiating that a good negotiator, you know, bangs the table and it's very demanding. And, you know, they get 99 and they leave one crumb to be divided between everybody else. And that's a good negotiation. And I would say at the beginning of my career, I probably thought that way as well, that success came from obliterating the person on the other side of the table. and my American Express experience actually selling KDS to American Express was the beginning of reversing that thought process for me because that was how some of the people I dealt with, you know, dealt with me and so I learned a bit about what it was like to be on the other end of that.

36:52I've since learned the best negotiations and I am most likely to get what I want or need when I focus on what the other person has to get out of the negotiation when I put more of my energy into delivering and enabling what you want to get out of the negotiation that's normally how I can make sure I get what I want better deals happen people open up more and become more willing to give and have a bit of an exchange and more importantly for me when they leave that negotiation the way they talk about what it was like to do business with me makes other people want to or okay doing business with me So in negotiating now, I spend a lot of time on, all right, I'm negotiating with Tim.

37:39What's in it for Tim? What does Tim want to get out of this? What meaning does that have for Tim? And how can I facilitate and enable that? Because I've got some things I want to. So that's become a bit of a strategy for me. The other strategy is leverage too. And sometimes I've seen people expect or want out of a negotiation because they're going to ask loudly or multiple times or make it clear that this is what they want. And you can do that. But that's best done with leverage, right? Where you have something that the other person wants or you have an ability to make the other person in a disadvantaged position because you've got another angle.

38:30And that's not to be confused with kind of focusing on what the other person wants. I can focus on what you want, which might be you want the job of hosting this podcast. So I can focus on that and how I'm going to enable that for you and how we're going to make sure that happens. But also I've got Kevin Hart too. He's on the side. So at some point we kind of, so having a bit of leverage is important. Those would be the first two things. I think the third thing is is the personal aspect to it and how you bring that into play. And I had a brilliant example of that when we sold Fortero to Partners Group.

39:12So, you know, that deal's well documented, right? That was the billion euro deal. With you and Lee in the room at the same. Unbelievable life moment. Benchoi thing, I'll catch you soon. All right. Cheers.

39:34a man pulled off a billion pound deal bruv that's so mad and i think that was thursday night and the plan was we were going to sign that deal on friday yeah uh and that week we dedicated to just staying in london me and my cfo Paul stay in London because there were free bidders and there were going to be lots of questions as there are in the final moments of a deal like that. Lots of negotiation, management comp, IP protection like tons of stuff going on. Plan was Dean and Paul stay in London and at the last minute on Sunday partners group said we need to spend time with Dean and Paul, we want to sign on Friday they weren't yet at a billion euros, they have to come over, we've got some stuff to go through with them before we submit our final bid and before we sign so we were debating saying should we go, should we not go it's late, there's only a week left in the deal we should probably stay then they said well we're going to pull out if Dean and Paul don't come because it's important to us that we have this time with him so we went on Monday leverage so me and Paul packed up our presentation all the documents, all the numbers we're rehearsing on the plane woke up bright and early Tuesday morning we're going for everything again we're getting ready to get annihilated with questions and we walk into partners group and one of the founders greets me he says oh dean i've been looking forward to meeting you i heard you used to play football uh how was that that must have been amazing i'm thinking wow this guy research like top top in the world he knows me and he knows he's like yeah he must have been really good to get that far look we're going to go for lunch drive with me and paul will go with uh with Charlie.

41:22So I jumped in his Lamborghini and he goes, you know, one of the things I really admire about you is your early start in tele-sales. You know, that must have taken a lot for you to do that and that's not an easy job and I did that at the beginning of my career. That's the thing, me and you have got a lot in common. I think this guy is a multi-multi-billionaire and he's like, you've got a lot in common. I'm thinking about 10 billion euros difference but apart from that. I'll take it. He's like, you know, that's the thing, that's why I want to do business with you because I know you've got the work ethic so then we go he's got a private art gallery he says to me I'm taking you to do you like art?

41:58so I'm like in my head I'm going no so I say yeah yeah of course I do he goes oh I want to take you to my gallery he's got a private art gallery so we go to his so I'm in my head I'm thinking oh my god art it's going to be you know 1920s statues of naked men oh I'm thinking I cannot think of anything worse but I want the deal but I want the deal so I love art can't wait so we get to his he's got his gallery is probably the size of like an average Tesco like it's huge right and it's one of the the world's biggest collections of Andy Warhol's and Basquiat's this is very important because if there are two artists on earth I know anything about it's Warhol and Basquiat and I know that from rap music because they're the most featured artists in Jay-Z lyrics and JD Consume so I only know about these artists because of hip-hop so now we're walking around his art gallery and he's describing the you know the actual piece of art and when it was done and the history and I'm explaining to him this piece of art's place in hip-hop culture and somehow we're having a conversation about art like we're actually having this conversation about art and then he said do you like cars I'm like yeah so we go downstairs and under the art gallery is one of the world's greatest collection of classic cars and we're walking around this collection of cars and he's saying oh oh that was james dean's last ferrari and that was so and so's and center's last road car i mean it's great conversation about cars and then we sit like in uh in the bar area in his in the car showroom he said i heard you like cognac so he's bringing out like all this old expensive cognac and we're drinking and i'm googling the bottles and they're like 30 ,000, 40 ,000 euros a bowl.

43:47And we left. Me and Paul left. I was like, what the hell just happened? That was the greatest day of my life. Like, I've never, we forgot about the deal and everything. As we're going, he said, listen, I really want to do this with you. This has been a great time. I think I want to partner with you. And we left. They signed the deal on Thursday night. Should have been signed on Friday, so they signed before everybody else. And months later, when I sat with him, you know such a great uh day thank you for spending that time i can't believe somebody in your position spent all of that time with us he said yeah it was good to spend time with you but we decided we wanted to take you out of circulation so that you couldn't answer questions for anybody else because when we got back from that trip me and paul came back to like reality we were like oh my god just reams and reams of unanswered questions so nobody could catch them because they took me and Paul out.

44:44They took us out of circulation. And very important lesson for me. I was panicking about calling him and saying, we've gone with someone else. As the deal was progressing for those last two days, there was just this thing in the back of my mind thinking, I cannot call a guy who's fed me 100 ,000 euros of cognac and show me the greatest day of my life and tell him he's not getting this deal. I mean, I would have done it if I had to. but I was just like backing him to win 100 % and I've taken that is another lesson right that was 2022 I learnt that there's a part of negotiating which is make it hard for the person to say no we focus on winning the yes but actually there's a part of negotiating which is I don't make it very hard for you to say no since then I do a lot of negotiating at my house like if I'm trying to do a big deal with someone I bring you to my house you meet my wife you meet my kids we pour my version of expensive wine.

45:43You eat at my dining table because it's hard, right? To say no. I shouldn't even say this out. But it's hard. Like you've met my family. We've sat in my living room until 1am like talking on a level with people away from business. Makes it hard for people to call you the next end girl. 100%. Actually, we're going with these guys for 10 million more. If you do something, and this is what I try to get people to understand. That was a long story. No, it wasn't. But I think for people listening to understand, you have to give away stuff sometimes in order to get what you want. Some people will be at loggerheads and say, well, I'm going to fight you on it.

46:15No, no, no, come, let's break bread. And then once I've given you something, it's easier to ask you to give me what I need. Absolutely. And that's the trick, right? Absolutely, yeah. Like you say, people sometimes forget that part of negotiating can be to give something. Someone once said to me, never give a 50 pound problem, 500 pound energy. And sometimes that happens in negotiations too. You know, you're hammering it out for five days on this last sentence, which isn't really material, and you're forgetting some of the big topics. So, you know, give that one away and get to the... That's the same with personal stuff.

46:50You can overemphasize stuff that you are challenging with rather than focusing on what's the important thing of moving you forward, right? On the other side.

47:00For people then who don't have the access to the networks and rooms that we do, you talked about reading a lot in terms of getting information and back what's your advice do you you think people should do the studying or go and find people to connect with you you have to find people to connect with you you have to like the practicalities of applying what you might read or have heard will not be amplified sufficiently until you have a sparring partner or two yeah that can you know work through those things with you and this is why i've said it many times like you are one of the most important people in my career and and in my life actually one of the most important people in my life and my career because when we met 17 years ago now i was just kind of hitting a trajectory in my career right things were starting to really move for me and i was really really struggling with this uh dichotomy of identity right so from eight until six, I'm a corporate dean.

48:06I've got a button-down Ralph Luen shirt on chinos, churches loafers. I can't say ain't and nah and don't and people say, oh, what did you do at the weekend? And I knew I was in an underground house and garage party. I knew I was, but I was saying, oh, me and the missus walked around Trafalgar Square and had a bit of luck. Because I didn't dare expose who I was. That's how I behaved at work. And when I left work, I hate myself for it i was like how inauthentic is this you are selling out and i just couldn't balance it at all and then i met you and suddenly coming back to that point of being around people and having a a sounding board for some of this stuff the first thing that happened when i met you is we both kind of went yeah we're both living this life too and we're both trying to figure this out we're both trying to navigate it too and then i had some i had a reflection so i could call you at the end the other day and say do you know what they asked me to do today tim they told me i've got to fly to milan tomorrow to get still done and i don't know if they would ask anybody else to do that it feels like they're asking me because i'm young on it and you would say well you know it might be in a good and we could talk about it and suddenly somebody who was my peer similar experience to me similar journey in so many ways was a a reference and a validation point for me and things other people could have said oh yeah you should fly to milan tomorrow i was still skeptical if you said it i thought okay actually it so it it just settled me into into my career at a time when i was asking myself a lot of questions about whether or not i could uh i could do this so if you want a an example of the power of having somebody in your circle who can be that i mean you you were the ultimate uh for me and vice versa the reality is that being the only one sometimes is hard heavy and lonely and then when we connected and we had dinner in canary wolf driving cars and all the back in the day right it was like you're not by yourself yeah and actually what you're doing is on the same trajectory as what somebody else is doing it justified re-energized to connect with you because it was like i'm not by myself yeah and i think for lots of people that's why this podcast is so important.

50:25We don't want them to feel that they're by themselves. We want to give them the real stuff, not the polished, short version. We want to give them the detailed version that says this is what you can do and you're okay where you are. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And it was hard because I don't think there were many guys with our background in corporate who were, you know, for a lot of black men growing up, the way to survive into corporate was to give up some of those elements. Lose part of your identity. Lose some of our identity, right? And I don't, again, I have no criticism or hostility towards people who made that choice.

51:04In fact, I understand the choice because I - It was survival. It was survival. And then they went on to have great careers. I never wanted to do that. And probably the biggest reason why I was able to be successful in corporate without doing that was because we met. And then as your career progresses, it becomes harder in a lot of respects right and i was um i was talking about this the other day that as you as you progress in your career as you become successful as you make money what happens friction disappears from your life yeah right with more and this has been my experience and i know other people similar experience friction starts to disappear from your life the more successful you become, the more money you have, the more friction vanishes from your life.

51:51It becomes a, yeah, I want to go here for dinner with Tim on Tuesday at 8. And they call and they go, you know, Dean's coming with Tim. Have you got a table at 8? No. Dean's coming with Tim. Oh. We can mail up. Because they want you to be there or they know you're going to spend money there, right? Or I want to go on holiday. I've got this window to go on holiday and I want this type of holiday. And then somebody who works for you, someone on your team goes and makes that holiday happen. There's an agent on the other side thinking, if I do a great job on this holiday, I'll get the next 10 holidays.

52:25So you have the most amazing holiday experience. And that's how your life becomes. Everything that you do has minimum friction. You're the boss at work. So most of the time when you talk or you have an opinion or you give an instruction, people do it. People do it. You don't get a lot of friction. So now you're desensitized to friction because no one's saying no. No one's saying to you, that doesn't look good. You look like an idiot. That tie is awful. You've messed up your beard. Like nobody is, you shouldn't do that. You shouldn't go there. That business idea is trash. People aren't doing that because their job, they don't want to rock the boat.

53:03They don't want to be pushed out of the circle. So there's no friction in your life. Then when you have friction, you question the person because you haven't had it for such a long time, right? your aunt says to you oh it's your cousin's birthday at the weekend we're having a party everybody's cooking something and bringing it what? I don't have time to cook I don't cook I've got a person so now you're like do I want to go there or you go there without something and now you're on the receiving in the family you don't why would you do that right? or your friendship circle you know whenever you go on holiday there's no friction then your friend calls you and says oh me and me and tony and barry are going to benedorm we're getting easy jet flight tomorrow at seven we've got this great place it's 80 quid a night do you want to come and you're so successful when your holidays have such little friction you're thinking this sounds like friction a lot of it yeah see actually no i'm going to give that a miss and your friends are going what so you can't do so you start to go oh maybe they're yeah i shouldn't have those friends anymore right these aren't the right friends for me i need more friends who just want to go to these places and I need more family members who don't have those expectations of me because friction has come out of your life and one of the the greatest things I've been able to do with the help of my friends is to keep positive friction in my life to keep people around me who will say yeah success is good and company's doing great and I saw a few more awards but you know when's the last time you watched DJ play football?

54:42Well, work's been difficult and I've been on it. No, no, that's not. That's not all right. You need to fix that. A friend will call me and say, I spoke to Dan, spoke to your wife. She said you've just been coming in late, crashing to sleep, out the house the next morning. You guys haven't had any quality time for a long time. What are you doing? No, that's because a lot going on and big deals. No, I didn't. That's not correct. You need to. It's friction. Yeah. Right. if people coming back and going that's not cool that's not okay that's not what you should do got to check in the balance keep the friction and where I see people go wrong sometimes from our similar backgrounds to us get successful money comes friction starts to die out and before you know it the very people who have your best interests at heart feel like friction and you push them away I've been very lucky I've been able to keep positive friction around me and you're an example of of someone who will make that call and say it's not what you're doing it's not okay The Ubuntu Circle, our immediate network, no holds barred.

55:41But you need that bit of positive friction to keep your feet firmly on the ground. Otherwise, it's quite easy, surrounded by people to tell you yes all the day, to fly in the clouds and be lost. One of the big things that you've created, though, is a platform for other people. You've been incredibly successful. With Fortiro, Caught on Capital, you're with Rodney and Cornerstone, raising now hopefully 100 million in your next fund. So there's some big numbers around you in terms of the successes you had. but you've never lost sight of giving back to the community. Talk to us about Forbes Family Group and what you and Daniel have done within that.

56:16Yeah, it's something I'm very, very proud of. And me, you know, Daniel and Davina, we kind of created that together. I'm very proud of it. It's all born out of the full acceptance that our lives have been transformed through proximity to other people who were helpful to us, held doors open for us, supported us. so we are the living embodiment of where somebody can get to from a certain background if helped so we set up false family group to try to in a small way be that help for others whether that's early stage entrepreneurs that we can help with investing whether that's mid-stage professionals to whom we can give career advice career coaching open doors or on the community side using our partnerships and our network to provide much needed funding for some of the community and charitable projects that we we care a lot about and you've done a myriad of things from supporting people through that covid time that we talked about but now investing in people's businesses through pitch competitions and others can you give us a size and scale of what you've done in the community in in numbers money terms i know you don't like you're uncomfortable with money but i think it gives a proportionality for people to understand i think since 2020 me and dan where we have put our own money in or been front of room in raising, it would be well beyond£2 million.

57:46And our personal side of that would be easily seven figures. And one of the big causes close to your heart was the Afro-Canada Leukemia Trust, right? Yeah, my daughter had leukemia when she was two. So we saw firsthand the brilliant work that ACLT do on a shoestring budget. and sometimes it's a gift and a curse you know when we're around the charity people suddenly think oh they're okay now we'll divert our support elsewhere but it's a charity that still needs um support even though the focus of the charity is of people on people of color because we have a different um often different blood types and from a um organ donor perspective we need closer matches but all of the work they do isn't like kept for black people right when they're doing blood drives that blood goes into banks and is used.

58:33Everybody can use it. Used by everybody. So it's really a charity we can all support and get behind. Fantastic. Dean, so you've achieved the goal that you set when we sat down in 2020. You looked forward and said, I'm going to do it for a billion and you did it. You've got the Cornerstone Forbes Family Group, the wine, Severin Wines now with you and Anne-Marie. To most people looking in, you've clocked life. Like what's happening? most people will be sitting back putting the slippers on and resting but you're still going so what's now on your forward forecast what are you looking at next? I'm not looking that much further ahead Fortero is now one of Europe's largest privately held software companies so I just think it's a privilege to be in that conversation we've trebled in the last five years revenue and profit I think we can treble again in the next five years, especially leveraging AI.

59:32So I'm excited for that, right? I'm excited to see how far we can go, test myself, test full potential. I kind of feel like a striker who's been playing like in League One my whole life. And suddenly I've been signed by Arsenal and I'm a bit later in my career. But now wouldn't be the time to come off of the pitch right now. Now isn't the time to hang the boots up because there's so much opportunity. So many good things happening. I'm so blessed. So I just want to carry on and see where we get to. Worked for your right, didn't it? You came in late. Worked for your right. Worked for your right.

1:00:06Okay, so what for you, now that you've got everything that you set out to achieve, regardless of the stuff that's still on the list, are you happy?

1:00:26um

1:00:30i don't know i don't know i don't know because my my advancement comes from saying that isn't good enough or i didn't do that well enough or i got 10 today i think i can get 12 tomorrow I ran 5k in 25 minutes yesterday. I think I can break 25 minutes tomorrow. I think it's sub 25 tomorrow. Fortero's biggest acquisition was of a company that had 800 employees, took us into a new sector. We've got a couple other sectors I think we can get into with bigger acquisitions, traveling tomorrow to go and look at one. So I don't know because my progress has come from always looking at what I just did or what I did yesterday and challenging myself to say I can, I'm disappointed with a 25 minute 5K because I think I can break 25.

1:01:25And that's how I'll break 25. That's how I'll break it. In order to keep moving forward, I have to, the only way I know how to do that is to stay unhappy with what I just did. That's the only way to do that. I think there'll come a time where I'll stop. I'll stop. and I think the moment after I stop, I'll look back and I'll say, for a kid who grew up with two brothers and a mum in the situation we grew up in, in the area we grew up in, I think I'll stop and look back and say, that was unreal. That was absolutely unreal. But until then, God break 25. Still going. Still going. I love it. What has that experience given you though?

1:02:09What has that experience given you? like I said earlier complete freedom complete freedom and that in my line of work is very important it's a very heavy responsibility having 3 ,200 employees people paying their mortgages with the salary we pay them which is in some part based on the strategic decisions I take as a leader the way I deploy capital I mean we spend hundreds of millions of euros every year at Fortero we have to spend that in the right way It's my job to be the custodian of how we spend that effectively. It's a huge pressure.

1:02:49But if it all goes wrong for me, not for those people, but if it all goes wrong for me, I've already emerged from life from that difficult situation from a very, very low base. I did it before, so I can do it again. So when I make decisions at work, I'm not handicapped by, or I'm not hamstrung by what if it all goes wrong. I mean, I don't want it to go wrong. Yeah, of course. But I've opened the fridge and there's no food in it, right? I've looked at my daughter at two years old fighting for her life with leukemia. I've sat next to my mom in the hospital after her third brain hemorrhage and second stroke.

1:03:29These are the important things in life. These are the big things. And I've beaten all of those things. so this 50 million euro deal at work this multi-billion euro exit this platform launch they're important but i've seen real importance i know what real importance looks like and that just makes me free in the way i operate i think i make better decisions because of it amen love that so we're going to final stage now so it's the payoff the payoff is just your quick fire response to a couple of questions. And the first one is, we call it still this habit, right? So what's one habit that has been a game changer for you?

1:04:14Sunday night planning for the upcoming week. Gives me back minutes in the following week because I take an hour on of Sunday blast through the week. And you've got a stylist now. I've got a lot of people to help me. You stay away from the stylist. You're looking really stylish over there. yourself you're looking quite good but it's good i like it i like it it's working right but you also say about doing hard things like running at five o 'clock in the morning oh yeah i come back to the friction topic like i want to keep my resilience high and you know i would admit that there's some elements in my lifestyle that uh can be resilience depreciating so i like to challenge myself i do a triathlon every month that's a good example and i do it on my own i do it's easy to sign up for a triathlon, train for a triathlon, tell everybody you're doing, you know, the great north triathlon.

1:05:08It's harder when nobody knows you're doing it and it's December and it's cold and it's just you to get out of your warm bed, walk past the smell of sausages and go and do 40 on the bike, 10 on the road and 500 in the pool. That's hard. So I like doing that every month because it keeps me disciplined. It's the reason I do Jiu Jitsu. Exactly the same. I'm going to get choked by somebody and that's not a nice feeling but I don't want to get choked so I have to do it right can you leave your house to go and get choked where I've got no friction to get a lot of friction you know it's so true right productivity hack what's the thing that you rely on to get things done calendar calendar fully populated calendar address name time travel time document notes on the meeting last meeting action items like the the fastest way for me to upskill someone to be able to do my job would be to give them my calendar and the way i run my calendar i think they'd be able to do 60 of my job with the way i run my calendar so people waste a lot of time you think yeah oh yeah yeah definitely there's that gaining those minutes put the document in the calendar put the questions in the calendar put the location in the calendar put the travel time in the calendar buy the ticket ahead of time if you can and put it in the calendar get it all done have the clothes hanged out makes sense what's on your not to do list try to stay out of the algorithm a little bit we all love a bit of a doom scroll every now and then but I do try to try to stay out of it I want to I had a period a year ago where I went four months without a phone I actually want to get back to that because you've got a rule when you go on holiday like no phone don't take my phone yep and that four months where I didn't have my phone.

1:06:58I was very effective, but then I got sucked back into the addiction of the phone. It's hard, isn't it? Nowadays, you can't not have a phone. It's hard, but possible. I had an iPad and it worked. Okay, all right, no phone. All right, your greatest failure and what you've learned from it? My greatest failure, which I haven't managed to get everyone to stop talking about, is the fact I failed at becoming a professional footballer. That was... I'm 48 now, right? And I failed at 18. it's literally 30 years ago but it might be because you keep everyone I'm an international cap holder that's why that might be the reason I failed at becoming a footballer and actually it was very pivotal because the the humiliation of being in a group of friends all of whom went on to have that career sobered me up very quickly to if I want to hang around these people and be respected I need to bring my own thing to the table and it made me pay attention same thing accountability when I failed pretty soon afterwards I realized I wasn't preparing right I wasn't eating right I wasn't training as hard as they were training I wasn't trying to learn so all of those things that in some way cost me the career I wanted I've never let those things happen to me again since then so it's why I'm so obsessive about preparation you know doing the work being disciplined is because yeah i failed and at that period of my life and i was literally like ain't happening again what's the one piece of advice final one one piece of advice that you wish you had earlier it's a hard one because i think my the thing i'm most proud of right the thing i would say my biggest achievement is now being myself like i'm absolutely myself now like 100 authentic i listen to this music i go to these places i eat this food i'm friends with these people i'm from this and people have been very welcoming of that right so that is the thing i'm probably proudest of i sometimes wonder whether i could have stepped into that a bit earlier than i did i don't know it might have compromised my career it might not the way I come to peace with it though is I think by being visible and being myself to the degree I am there will be other people earlier in their career there's a Dean and a Tim at 30 like when we met who I hope are looking at that in some way and saying even if not today at some point it will be alright for us to be ourselves I don't know if I would do that earlier or not but that if you were to ask me my greatest achievement or the thing I'm proudest of.

1:09:48It's that. Amen. Well, you've been 100 % authentic on this and I've loved the conversation. I know the viewers are going to get a huge amount of it. Dean, thank you so much for coming. Thank you for having me, my friend.

1:10:04A massive thanks to Dean for joining me on Reworking. Long overdue conversation and one that I absolutely loved. I really enjoyed discussing with him the importance of discipline, structure and his thoughts on privilege were absolute genius. What I particularly took away from Dean's conversation was what he said about what it actually takes to be successful. In his view, you're either extremely talented, extremely lucky or prepared to put in the hard yards. Most of us don't get to choose the first two. The third one is a choice that you can actually make. Put the hard work in. He also made the case for going deep, not wide.

1:10:38Be really good at one thing and you'll beat the person who's a six or seven out of 10 at a lot of things. So pick your thing and focus. But if you take one thing away from my chat with Dean, make it this. Be disciplined with your time, with your energy and with who you let into your circle. It's the hardest part to do and it's the part that matters most. As always, I'd love to hear from you. The whole point of reworking is to demystify work and help you feel more successful and in control of your career. So get in touch on social or email reworking at bowermedia.co.uk. and don't forget to sign up to The Reworking Newsletter for more lessons, ideas and practical takeaways from these conversations.

1:11:20See you next time.