Stood in the Great House on the hill looking at a photo of Sam Branson and his friends, I turned around and Richard walked up to me arm outstretch and with a warm smile he bowed his head gently and welcomed me to his home. It is the greatest thing for me to meet such a distinguished businessman. I have many friends who have become incredibly successful. Most of them though are particularly hard with their staff and rule their businesses with an iron rod. Richard is someone who clearly breaks this mold and it is refreshing to see that he is a million miles away from the ludicrous business ethics they portray on The Apprentice.

It didn’t take him long to suss me out and pretty soon we were discussing sport. He is currently in training for the Virgin sponsored London Marathon. He had already heard I was a keen exerciser and immediately asked if I’d like to run with him. A couple of Richard’s guests arrived for drinks, they were staying on the nearby island. They owned and developed Vale and Beaver Creek in the US. (An amazing Ski Resort) During the conversation with Janet and Paul from Beaver Creek, one thing stuck out and it made an indelible mark in my brain that I think will be there forever.

Richard said, “well, if you say Yes! to everything, you are going to have a far more interesting life.”

In my 41 years on this planet nobody has ever give me such great advice or such a great directive. And it makes perfect sense. How many of us just potter through life and procrastinate. I have only been on the island less than a week, but I am 100% sure you will never see Sir Richard Branson procrastinating. He is a decisive character, who doesn’t stop for breath.

Before leaving for bed, I asked what time we should meet. He said “pop around to the house at 6.45am and just shout me if I am not up.”

I didn’t sleep a wink that night, excited at the prospect of continuing a great conversation with a fantastic philanthropist and entrepreneur.

We have since run for a number of hours together and I have had some solid business advice during my time following in his great footsteps. Advice that once you have heard it appears like complete common sense. However you could read a 100 books and find 50 different ways from a variety of experts which all contradict each other. So to hear it from someone you respect, immediately fills me with confidence. And actually now we have discussed it, I totally understand and I cannot wait to get back to UKFast and start implementing some of these great ideas.

Yesterday I ran with him a little later than before, and I reminded him of what he had said to me and what an impact it had.

I explained that you could have written an essay, yet in one short sentence he summed up just how simple you need to make it.

“If you say Yes! to everything, you are going to have a far more interesting life.”

What a great piece of advice and for anyone setting out as a young entrepreneur, in business, in school, wherever and whatever you are wanting to do, this is good advice. It is a simple strategy that I can promise you Branson lives by. He is a man with a large appetite for life and it grows bigger by the day, and I am sure his positive attitude towards just doing things straightaway, off the cuff without procrastinating has to have something to do with his enormous success.

I am very interested in how he portrays his feelings on this subject, as he decided to use the line as subject matter for a column he is doing for the New York Times. It is definately something to look out for.

Lawrence Jones UKFast

Dedicated Server Hosting, Manchester

But in real terms the journey started way before. And if Richard Branson has taught me anything, the brand experience is truly transferrable between Virgin businesses.

My first encounter of Virgin was Culture Cub. A great band in the 80’s. They wrote a song called Victims, which has truly the best piano introduction of any pop song.

I went on to approach Virgin Records years later with a demo after recording a song called “Whenever the Leaves Fall” on a load of old recording equipment once owned by John Lennon. It was in a tiny recording studio, not much bigger than this cockpit.

I spent months trying to talk myself into an appointment at the old Virgin headquarters on Ladbrook Grove and Harrow road, London.

It was there I learnt the art of instant relationship building and the importance of getting to know the gate keeper. I’d ring back in different accents, and the receptionist would say, “is that you again Lawrence?”

I never gave in and one day after hearing the receptionist ask a colleague “is Danny in?” after I asked to speak with the head of A&R, after getting knocked back again, I rang back 10 minutes later and confidently said, “hi there, is Danny in yet?”

I was promptly put through. This technique and confidence has stood me in great stead for many years since.  On this occasion I was quickly brought down to earth with a bump after a lady answered the phone.

I said, “hi is Danny there?” “Danny speaking” the lady replied. I was taken aback as I was expecting a man!

In true Virgin style she was lovely and said on the basis that I had got this far, she agreed to see me.
I remember the meeting well, and she liked the track. The disadvantage I had was that I did not have a readily formed band. She was in the process of signing The Railway Children, ironically my next door neighbours in Salford! What is the likelihood of that?

In my opinion they signed the wrong act, and the Railway Children never left the platform. They spent their advance on MGB roadsters and were dropped after never cutting it.

I went on to get an offer from a chap called Brian St.James Carr, a well known solicitor involved with The Sex Pistols, PIL (Public Image Limited) and Andrew Lloyd Webber. He heard my songs and got me involved with a chap called Lawrence Roman an incredibly gifted classical musician who did all of Lloyd Webbers musical arrangements.

He did the clever stuff in my opinion and made Webber look amazing, however I was young and I thought I’d get loads of opportunities like this and I turned it down.

I then made a decision to make it on my own in business first and pursue my music later. I knew I would either be incredibly poor or incredibly rich but it was highly unlikely to be the latter on the basis of how the industry works.

I had also developed some friends who worked in the arts, and I quickly learned that I was not someone who coveted the limelight. I’d have thrived off a publishing deal, but being a star was not a motivator for me.

To be successful in anything you have to devote yourself to it fully. 20 years later, I am still devoted to the cause and although hugely successful in certain elements of our business I am only on the first few rungs of a very long ladder.

And the music? Well one day! That is if I ever calm down my love for developing people. When I met Gail, I sold my recording studio and focussed on developing UKFast.

Not a bad gamble as it turns out. Especially when you consider the odds that were against us.

If you use the Jim Collins 3 circles principal to identify should we have set up UKFast as a hosting business, I’d have quickly identified that this was a daft venture to embark on. However it does demonstrate that passion and determination can on occasions replace common sense and logic.

1. can we be the best at it?
   Well truly honestly at the time, no way. We were competing with multimillion pound corporations. That being said, we have won 6 years out of 10 the ISPA’s Best Hosting Provider accolade, so it is funny how things turn out
2. are we passionate about it?
   Absolutely. After trying to host our own domain name thegallery.com we had appalling trouble with a business called Newnet. Peter Coates (who recently sold his business for £3m) and his son Gary had huge potential, however they were techy people and appallingly arrogant. My wife just reading this laughed and asked if that was tetchy or techy? They were so bad that when we moved, we simply left our equipment with them as we couldn’t face dealing with them further.
3. is it financially viable?
   Well, if I’d known the difficulties ahead, I would not have ventured down this road. We were self-funded, which is a posh way of saying we had no money; so everything had to work immediately. We had to work so hard around the clock, if we made one error, we were dead in the water. That was the simple truth of the matter. Not something you want over your shoulder, yet that being said, you wont get a bigger driver! If I didn’t sell, we didn’t eat.

Times are very different now. I have 2 wonderful kids and a wife, who is still my business partner, with the added responsibility of a working mum. We have been very lucky. We still have no debt (which is a posh way of saying, now we have money in the business) and we have had numerous offers from competitors to buy UKFast including one for in excess of £50m.

But it is not the money that motivates us, it is the journey that we are on, and I simply love every day and I live for the challenge.
So why Necker? Well, when I was turned down by Danny Van Endon at Virgin, I set a goal. Right, I thought, I will get there myself. One day I will do business with Branson and Virgin in some capacity. I will become successful on my own.

A few years later, I hired a Grand Piano to the Virgin company for a new artist at a place called the Boardwalk in Manchester. I remember the Fax Header, with all of Richard Branson’s businesses and locations. It was incredibly inspiring. It had Necker as one of the destination boxes to tick. It was then that I decided, “I’d like to go there and one day meet the man behind the company.”

Last year whilst staying at The Lodge another property owned by Virgin, I said to Gail, we need to find out who hosts this business and get them as a client. It transpired they are already a customer, and have been a happy one for a number of years. We also host UKTV which is owned by NTL part of the Virgin Group.

And 15 years on from that Fax and that initial goal, here I find myself, mid air on the way to paradise.

view from the main house, Necker Island.

Lawrence Jones

I asked a couple of members of the BA staff, does BA stand for Bloody Awful, after the worst experience I have ever encountered of substandard behaviour by representatives of BA.

I was checking in proudly to my first class seats at the BA counter in Manchester, when I met the second rudest woman I have ever had the misfortune to meet. We had telephoned the night before just to ask advice on the recently introduced ESTA. (An official government document required if you are flying to or through America.) The advice we were given by BA was “don’t worry about it, arrive at check-in in the morning and we will deal with it then as technically you don’t need one as you are not staying in the US.”

We trusted the advice and when checking in, told the lady at the First Class counter why we had not filled out the ESTA as per our instructions from the BA staff the previous night. At this point she categorically refused to check us onto the flight and promptly blanked us. I asked for help, and pleaded with her for someone more senior who could assist.

Enter (stage right) the rudest woman I have ever met. She arrived with a plastic smile that she maintained for the best part of 45 seconds before laying into my wife who was beautiful in her calmness. The BA official told us we should have filled out the ESTA online and that we should have and I quote, “put that you are staying in Miami in the destination box.” I explained that our final destination was the British Virgin Islands, I didn’t dare tell her it was Necker. “we advise people who are traveling through the US to the Caribbean to put down they are staying in the Continental in Miami.”

I explained that this would be incorrect and that this was a US official immigration department document!

Without another word the 2 rude BA staff disappeared.

We were kept waiting 40 minutes. Powerless and no other members of BA staff were prepared to help. When we asked for help, they said, “we are not getting involved.”

It really was like a farce. And if she hadn’t made my 6 year old burst into tears I’d have have been laughing in disbelief. We had turned up to enjoy the first class experience.

Enter Simon, a scruffily dressed man in jeans and a creased polo shirt.  ”Because of the delay at check in and that my staff members had not known how to deal with the ESTA, we are able to board this flight to Heathrow, but unfortunately it was now too late to attach the luggage to the connecting flight.”

He advised us that he had personally seen to it that the plane to Miami would wait for us. He apologised for the behavior of the 2 staff and he assured me we would be met by ground staff and hurried through at the other end.

It was clear this man just wanted rid of the situation. He was working on the principal, Out of Sight Out of mind. (perhaps a new management course BA are running)

My 6 year old asked me , “Daddy, why was that lady so rude?” and I was unable to defend her.

This farce had actually delayed the plane leaving Manchester and stressed 100 or so other people also connecting to Miami and other destinations.

On arrival at Heathrow, there were no ground staff waiting to assist us between the planes. Luckily everyone else just managed to get their flight to Miami, but no surprise, we missed ours waiting for our luggage.

I saw the striking BA logo with the words CUSTOMER SERVICE in massive letters. Fantastic I thought. I’ll pop over and get some help.  The 2 ladies (who reminded me of Les Dawson’s characters) with folded arms grunted back at me when I politely said, “I don’t suppose you can help and tell me where to go, we have missed our flight.”

“We’re baggage.” I continued and the other one piped up, “have you a problem with your baggage?” “No” I replied, “well we can’t help you then. Like my friend told you we are baggage” They carried on talking and I couldn’t help pointing out the irony in how they described themselves.

Walking away I pondered, does BA stand for Bloody Awful. It should do!

Eventually after a series of equally idiotic encounters with various Bloody Awful staff I found someone who was lovely. She was kind and called Jeanette. However the damage was done. The brand was dead in my eyes.

She did start quite hard like the first Bloody Awful staff in Manchester, telling us that as we had missed the flight and it was more than likely non refundable. First class tickets can be as much as £9000 each I didn’t dare ask Gail how much she had paid. I must have turned white with the sick feeling. 4 tickets wasted. 3 demoralised girls, 2 hours extra waiting and 1 missed flight! Jeanette quickly realised what had happened.

She explained the check in staff in Manchester were all agency staff. She fixed the ESTA issue in a few minutes putting “IN TRANSIT” in the destination box.

She went on to explain they had not had a pay rise in 2 years and that they had no idea if their jobs would even be here tomorrow. “The spirit is dead, and I am so sorry you have had all this trouble.”

Every cloud has a silver lining. And thank God, Jeanette booked us on to a Virgin Atlantic seat. One of our daughters, the 3 year old had some sort of anaphylactic reaction on the plane and needed emergency care. 2 doctors on board helped out giving her adrenalin injections, oxygen and salbutamol. Nikki, the Upper Class Senior Cabin Crew team leader was amazing, along with her team particularly Ross and Sacha.

We sat on the floor of the cabin outside the cockpit. The captain regularly came out to check on our 3 year olds well-being and after nearly the entire flight she recovered miraculously as kids do!

So how does something so great, become so Bloody Awful? Fancy not rewarding your staff and undermining them so they don’t know if their jobs are safe. I can’t imagine the people at the top have had similar pay problems?

British Airways is overweight in some areas and anorexic in others.

In our business if you have a potential weakness in an area you invest in it, and you allocate the best, strongest most aligned individuals. You certainly don’t cut back.  The problem with BA is they have multiple areas of weakness, so as fast as you build relations with the likes of Jeanette you have sledge hammer Customer Services or disconnected agency staff with their own challenges. Invariably you destroy the brand value.

I think one of the issues BA also has is whilst they are busy infighting, arguing over pay and bureaucracy, the Virgin Atlantic team is taking conflict very seriously indeed. Going about their business with the Sun Tzu approach.

“He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.”

Well, in my mind BA does stand for Bloody Awful and although I have enough free airmiles to fly around the world 7 times, I’d sooner pay to fly a proper airline. Britain’s best airline Virgin.  And I wouldn’t swap our seat on the floor next to the loo for a BA Experience.

Lawrence Jones
UKFast

However, what is really going on behind the scenes. He has clearly behaved stupidly, but is it our business what he does in his private life? Are all the people judging him in the media squeaky clean? I doubt it. But nevertheless, whenever the TV is switched on there he is, in the public eye.

His recent apology in my opinion is farcical. He should not apologise to the world, his issue is a lot closer to home. In my opinion he is apologising purely to save the Tiger Woods brand. The potential lost revenue bad publicity brings. Everyone remembers the Ratner story how one of Britains biggest brands fell out of favour overnight, quite literally.

The reason why he shouldn’t be apologising for being a sex addict or whatever ludicrous title they are brandishing on him, is because the same ingredient that got him into this mess is the identical ingredient that made Tiger Woods the most amazing golfer that has walked this earth so far.

This is his obsessive gene.  He should not be going to therapy to quosh this gene, you will kill the golden goose. Yes he needs to stop behaving like a twit and pull his finger out and whatever else (pun intended) and obsess on his golf.

The cycle of success goes like this.

1. Work hard, focus.

2. Start to get results.

3. Become successful

4. Celebrate, take time out and start to relax

5. Ease off on the disciplines that made you suucessful

6. Focus on other things

7. Start to fail

8. Completely hit rock bottom

9. Decide to make a change and improve.

Back to number 1 again.

Ironically if Tiger Wood’s family are behind the “public apology” his mother who laden with diamonds (no doubt gifts from her sons wealth) and others, although meaning to help, will start to sabotage their very existence.

And the one person who can help? The one person who understood success and the disciplines needed to obtain greatness. Tiger Wood’s father, who is no longer alive.

It is little wonder then when such a great mentor and leader dies, that the son starts to fail without the guidance and discipline close at hand.

That being said, obsessive characters can choose to focus on a great many things. The fact that he chose sex and other people away from his wife tells me that he lacks variety. The variety that he got from golf in the early days may have worn off. “Will I win this tournament?” eventually became, “of course.” Which in turn leads to stages 3 and 4 which invariably mean poeple take their eye off the ball.

So what is the best for Tiger Woods now? I can guarantee going to some posh clinic for sex therapy is NOT the answer. This just means he focusses more on what became the problem. He needs to do the opposite. Tiger Woods has the ability to fix this problem (if it actually is a problem) in a matter of seconds. A simple decision to say “no” from a man with the level of determination he posses is enough.

But you might be saying “he shows incredible weakness by his actions”, possibly, but again, he is just a man looking for variety. And due to the abundance of variety he has had in the past, this guy needs to get a whole heck of a lot of it. The variety of will I get caught or wont I replaced the will I win or wont I.

This is a competitive man. Yes he has acted unkindly to his wife, but we dont know the full story, there may be more to the saga in his home life. If his family and true friends have his and their best interest at heart, they need to put a set of golf clubs in his hands and march him up and down the course until he has it out of his system.

Personally I wish him all the best. He shows he is human and I think he has been found out for a crime that many people do day in day out, but just hide it very well.

It is not something I can do easily, switching off, in fact my idea of switching off and winding down are very different to most.

So what do I mean by making the most of very hour? (that god sends), thats the old adage that I remember from the “olds” in our family. Without the technology advancements I still find I am being taught lessons I was previously told in a former life as a child.

It is easy for me, I had a life threatening moment. A realisation that I was not immortal and that OK, I escaped death this time, but at some point we’d meet again face to face. When you have a moment like that, you realise that everything around you is precious. Every moment.
I remember being pulled from the hole which the boys dug me out from, with the worst headache in the world. My new life was literally moments old. I had been reborn in a funny sort of way, this was undoubtedly a second chance. And the thing I remember most, is the feeling of Rob’s lips on mine. They were so soft it was incredible. I better explain…Rob was one of our friends on the trip, a thoracic heart surgeon, handy to have around when you need resuscitating.

I asked myself a question as my life ebbed away that day. What have I achieved? I had left nothing. In fact I wasn’t a great man, if I am honest I was a selfish man. Not deliberately selfish but nevertheless I was certainly not a happy man.

By having this moment of truth, when I came around, boy was I on a mission to rectify things.

I remember removing 2 drips and my ECG and checking myself out of the hospital. I had a life to lead.

And do I live every moment now? Absolutely and I love getting a different perspective on life. And this is where time out is so important. This morning I came down stairs to watch the sun come up. I am on holiday, the girls are all sleeping. But I am awake, so I cannot lie down. My brain wants to go and do things.

So as the sun comes up in the beautiful Caribbean, I look at my watch and see that it is 10.02 am in the UK and I am reminded of all my friends and family over there. This is a great time to reflect. By 10.am on a Saturday morning in the UK, I’d have already done 60 minutes squash, had a massage and finished the first in a string of meetings. But being grateful is an important ingredient if you want to find true success. True happiness. It is something I try and do regularly, but nothing beats being away from everything and everyone to truly appreciate them.

At first the world here looks very sleepy. But the birds are singing. It is still dark. The Concierges are having a cup of tea and a well earned chat after a long night. And down below the restaurant is awaking. The banta is loud from the kitchen and the world is alive. You see peoples true personality first thing in the morning. The staff here at the hotel are fantastic. They are so well mannered, polite and they conduct themselves in the most professional manner. Not at the moment they’re not! They are laughing loudly, flirting with each other, throwing stuff, they are playful. They are much more fun! You develop much stronger relations with people when you around them when  they are being their most natural.

So when was the last time you took time out? Proper time out?

Are you too busy? This is a common reason people give for not having the time to themselves. People generally and sadly don’t see the value of time to yourself. Time to reflect.

This is not selfish, wanting time out. This is an absolute necessity if you want to find true success. And true success does not mean the amount of money you earn. You can be rich and unfulfilled. You can have nothing and be the happiest man alive.

That being said, every successful entrepreneur I know, values time to themselves and sets aside time away from their normal schedule.

And this is why holidays are so important. They need to be regular. I don’t care what sort of dynamo you are if you are not slowing down and taking stock and also rewarding yourself for the hard work you put in on a regular basis, you will eventually collapse. You will not sustain the ultimate success you are chasing, worse still you may end up meeting your maker a little earlier than expected!

This is a happy subject, first thing on a Saturday morning. But actually it is. Life is for living. You need to cram as much into every day as you can. Have you ever wondered why some people, the really successful ones ever manage to arrive at this destination. Put simply is that some of these people will achieve more in a month that normal folk do in a lifetime.

Imagine if you lived until you were 1000 years old. Imagine just how rich you would be. What would the equity in your house be worth then! You might not be particularly looking your best! But think of all the things you’d have accumulated and the wealth of knowledge you’d have too.

But its a good way to look at it. Successful people and entrepreneurs maximize their time, they don’t sit still for very often and they put their brain to work from the moment it wakes up. That being said, I am going to finish this coffee, steal 2 minutes staring out to sea walk along the beach, then I am off to wake up the girls and squeeze every drop of juice out of this magical day!

Go have a great one.

Loz (UKFast)

I have been lucky enough to have met some incredibly successful individuals over the years, particularly in sport, business and music. These are 3 very different areas and you would think they all require very different needs to make the individuals rise to the top of their game.

In reality though, the answer is “not at all.” The people at the top of their game whatever their profession, share common values. This is evident in all successful people. You will hear experts on this matter talk about “passion, determination, motivation, self-belief.” Yes these are all common in high achievers, so they are the obvious ones to get picked up. They all might also eat 3 meals a day and this does not guarantee success. It is also easy to assume that the confidence a successful person has, once they have achieved greatness, was the same at the beginning of the journey, and this is not always the case either. So what is the secret common ingredient?

It is simple when you think about it. What is the most precious commodity known to mankind? The one thing in life that cant be cheated. Time. Successful people all understand the importance of time. By understanding the clock is ticking, just like in a race or a sporting event, every minute is a minute wasted when you are not working towards a greater goal.

Ironically, it is the one ingredient we also have in abundance, so much so, in my opinion this is why we take it for granted.

The only reason I started to become successful was after a near death experience. Once I experienced the possibility that death was just around the corner, I realised that life was to be lived. I made the slightest change in attitude towards time, and this made a massive difference to everything I touched from then on in.

The answer to every question is “do it now.” If someone had asked me before my accident “do you want to go to the gym?” or “do you fancy organising the house?” The answer would have probably been “maybe later” or “tomorrow.” Ask me the same thing now, and if I now say “tomorrow” it will be because I have genuinely crammed so much stuff into today or rather my wife has! My wife grasped this concept at the same time. When Gail arrived in France and found me in a hospital attached to 2 drips covered in wire and hooked to all sorts of contraptions, it was just as real for her on the other side of the fence.

So when you are doing your New Year’s resolutions. Scrap them all and just do one. Make a conscious decision to treat time as leverage to do more. Imagine what would happen if you crammed in a weeks worth of achievements in to a weekend. Pretty soon you will be doing a months worth in a week, and when you get super efficient, there are people who achieve more in a year than most people do in a lifetime. Think about it,  in today’s society, doesn’t that automatically make these people more successful.

So today, and what better day to make a change, New Year’s day; take 3 things that you have been putting off and just go and do them, now, with out hesitation. See how much better you will feel, then tomorrow, just do the same, and so on.

All these small achievements will amount to massive change a year from now. Try it. It is easier than you think. After all what have you got to loose? Only time will tell!

Time is the most underrated commodity in business and life in general. Have no regrets and live life to the full.

Happy New Year and have a great 2010.

Lawrence Jones

In fact if it wasn’t for a pretty horrendous experience when trying to register and host a domain called theGallery.com, we’d never have changed direction and set up a business in the hosting arena. And I suppose it was the “bad experience” which forged the direction we took to provide the very best in service right from the outset. It was this start which also gave us an understanding of exactly how a client feels when the hosting provider goes wrong or doesn’t listen.
If you are a client of UKFast and you ever have a problem, write to me or pick up the phone. I hate having matters left unresolved and I cannot settle when I know a clients server is down.

Although it is a decade ago, I remember choosing the name UKFast very carefully. The name needed to reflect exactly what we were about. UK, obviously for it’s location, Fast, because we hated slow service and slow connectivity, .net because we were a network and hosting related. Partly too because the .co.uk version had already been registered. It took us 3 years before we were able to acquire the UK TLD version of UKFast.

We must have trawled the who-is directory for 3 days trying every name possible. It was during the boom so the world and his dog were registering every derivative of every word. Design agencies were popping up everywhere linking colours to animal names. Blue Pig, Black Sheep etc. You can almost pin point a company and its date of origin from the style of the name.

So 10 years on what has changed? Well just about everything, in fact it is easier to highlight what has NOT changed. Neil Lathwood, then a teenager working in a computer shop, found by my wife on a search for someone who could network some machines I’d sold. He came in a for a days work experience and never left. He is now the IT director and one of the most well respected boffins in our industry. It is safe for me to say, I do not know a harder working man on the planet. His desire to continually learn and stretch boundaries is only matched by an identical skill inherent in my wife. Together we formed a solid senior management team and 10 years on we continue to disagree and challenge each other. We are considerably more beefed up now with Jonathan Bowers, communications director and Paul Harris, marketing director, yet we all still have to learn new skills every year to ensure we are capable of managing a continually changing business and horizon.

So what lies ahead in 2010. I am so excited by the challenge ahead this year. Even more so than usual. Last year saw UKFast able to compete with a bigger marketing budget. It is one of the challenges of funding a business privately and not borrowing form banks. We have seen many businesses fly past us on our journey, a lot now we have caught up, some we have overtaken, the others give me the challenge and the determination to continue to grow UKFast to be the best of the largest business to business hosting providers in the UK.

Last year we saw the benefit of the Castell Cidwm acquisition, a hotel at the foot of Snowdon in the National Park in Wales. It is an invaluable asset used for training and team building. It is a place where status is removed and replaced with rack-sack and compass, a place where team members can see their managers in as much pain as they experience themselves. We have run more than 40 trips touching more than 100 staff. Put simply it cements all the people who invest time and energy down there and lifts camaraderie when we are back in the office.

This coming year we are focussing on growing the business further and we have some exciting announcements expected in 2010. We are also exploring the opportunities of some potential acquisitions and some new services which will compliment our existing offering.

In the mean time, to everyone who has helped UKFast grow, people past and present, thank you for your ideas and contribution. To our amazing client base, thank you too. By having such a strong client base we are able to invest in infrastructure that ordinarily none of us would be able to afford singly. Thank you for having the foresight to choose UKFast and if you are not already a client I look forward to meeting you one day on our quest to speed up the Internet and improve the way we all do business online.

Happy Christmas.

Lawrence Jones

It was 11 years ago at Granada I first used the Grand Ballroom at the Palace for an event. It was to raise money for the Christie’s For Cancer Appeal. The night was a huge success and I fell in love with the room. It is the perfect room for hosting a ball.

I knew the hotel well, as I’d originally played the piano there in my early years when I first came to Manchester. I had some great memories of the place and I made some fantastic friends. It was during the era of Les Miserables. And the cast used to pile in there for a few drinks after the show, before dragging me out until dawn. It was a real experience and my links to the area so strong, I bought an apartment in Oxford Place next door.

Years earlier I had my first job in a shop called A1 music, right opposite the Palace on New Wakefield Street. I did a range of jobs, from brushing up, to decorating. The funniest of these jobs, (although not at the time) was when Ann the proprietor asked me did I know anyone who could do plastering? Fancy asking a 17 year old for advice on building. Of course I promptly answered, “I can.” I had seen people plaster many times  with the houses my father used to renovate when I was growing up. I failed to mention my specialty was demolition.

The plaster eventually went up and although not particularly smooth, I was quite proud of the job. I spent that evening building all the furniture for the room. The next day I was greeted by Ann’s husband Graham who was furious. He marched me up stairs to see my handy work. All the plaster had peeled off the walls and had covered all the brand new furniture. It had then promptly dried over night!

I did a variety of jobs at A1 including their book keeping, but it was the selling I enjoyed the most. As a “Saturday boy” the professional sales guys hated me in the sale floor, so I was only able to cover for people when they were on their lunch.

Guaranteed with out fail, every lunch I would have a field day selling. I learned that by being honest and directing clients to what they needed as opposed to what the thought they wanted was a great recipe for success. I also realised I only had an hour, so I concentrated my efforts and honed my craft.

As I held the record for the biggest sale in the company’s history, Ann was much aggrieved when the sales men clubbed together and convinced Graham to put me in the basement wiring up reconditioned speakers.

Happy to accommodate, to the basement I went. It was there I was told to answer the telephone and I learnt a knew skill. I was now only able to sell when carrying the speakers across the floor. So this is precisely what I did, and I learned how to get to the point almost immediately, and with in months, we had sold every pair, with me selling the lions share. On the telephone I was also developing relationships, there were a few massive deals where I convinced the keyboard player of a touring band who were playing at the Apollo, who were number 4 in the charts at the time to come in and part with £21,500. Eventually Ann forced Graham to concede that it was ridiculous to bury someone showing promise.

It was around this time that I got my first job as a professional pianist, and rather than rock the boat with the other guys, I moved on and decided to use my musical talent to further my career. Which brings me full circle back to the Palace.

The event on Saturday was seamless, from the outside at least! Behind the scenes, the band, Clem Curtis and the Foundations were without a drummer who had broken down in Nottingham, and with 45 minutes before the start, I called my brother-in-law to ask for help. Dave is a fantastic drummer and agreed to lend me his kit, so we could get it set up and sound checked whilst everyone enjoyed the champagne reception upstairs. He also offered his services as a stand-in drummer too!

There is a saying “you cant chose you family,” and if you could, I couldn’t ask for a better guy. His attitude and calmness meant I was able to enjoy dinner and even with 30 minutes to spare when the actual drummer turned up, I couldn’t have been more relaxed.

On hind site though, it reminds me why I dont do this sort of thing for a living anymore.  If you think computer hardware is unreliable, you should try managing musicians!

I also was reminded of what I loved about event organising too. Giving pleasure to so many people is so rewarding. Being on this side of the fence too, where I was the client and the organiser, meant I could make the right decisions there and then. The team comprising of Gail, Rach, Paul and Jonathan literally had the entire evening organised and scripted to the minute. I could not have asked for a better team. Jim Collin’s description “the right people on the bus can be moved anywhere” was demonstrated by the way my events team, comprising of a few of my senior management team, changed roles as efficiently as a chameleon changes colour. But although I had great fun revisiting this former profession, I would not swap what I do now for the world.

Well, maybe it’s time for that discussion.

A couple of weeks ago we were planning our new “School of Hosting” campaign. This was at a time when we had just had a very successful day where staff dressed up in St.Trinian’s outfits to raise money for charity, it was suggested, why not use the photography and continue the theme to promote the School of Hosting.

Business men and women of City Tower Manchester are used to the staff at UKFast turning up in all sorts of outfits. Dressed in suits for 4 days a week, from time to time UKFast relaxes its dress code policy in line with various calendar events or charity days.

This particular one was done in a similar vein.

As soon as the advert hit the shelves and the banners appeared on various websites, a few people complained. Now I am a great believer in freedom of speech, just as I am a believer in the right to express oneself and exercise your individuality.

We all need our own passionate driving forces and conflicting views, that is what makes the world such an interesting place.

Personally I feel the advert is completely innocuous and as it was designed and created by women and as I know it was never meant to offend I think it was harmless. It is funny how people automatically assume something like this was dreamt up by the men in an organisation. But to the thousands of positive comments and visitors to the site, thank you.

So, going back to the original comment about being raised in a convent, growing up amongst 150 girls does have its advantages. The greatest of these was that I was able to gain an understanding of how the “other half” work, their minds, their behaviour, their communication, their sensitivity.

It is safe to say, as a result of my social conditioning, I empathise far more with women than men. I feel far more at ease on a night out with 30 mums from the school our kids go to over a rugby club networking dinner full of men.

I am not sure of the split of men and women in management  positions across the UK, however at UKFast it is clear to see my trust in women is carried into the work place. In positions of trust where a high level of autonomy and delegation is required, the split of men and women is 50:50. We have 9 ladies and 9 men, managing 102 staff. As we have more men in the business overall, it is a fair claim that on average, the women at UKFast hold higher positions over the men.

I hope it is not too sexist to say also, out of all the management, I have slightly more confidence in the organisational skills of the women over the men.  (Oops, sorry guys)

My wife has put her views on the subject of the advert itself here.

The 3 circles. You may have come across Jim Collins a lecturer at Stamford University, he is an authority on the study of successful businesses. He predicted and charted the growth of some of Americas biggest businesses and when challenged as a young lecturer by a student not much older than himself on the success of Apple (a then unknown) he decided to put his formula down on paper and test it amongst other great fortune 500 businesses.

One of the things he found with his research is that all of the businesses which grew at a faster rate than everyone else, did some things in common. One of these was called the 3 circles principal, adopted by the likes of Walmart, Sony, Apple, Microsoft.

The 3 circles are:

Can you be the best at something?
What are you passionate about?
What drives your economic engine?

If you answer YES to all of these when venturing into new unchartered territory you cant go far wrong.

Can you be the best at something?

There is no point setting up a business if you cant genuinely create a better company that those which already dominate an industry. It make years of trying, but ultimately you have to aim high and keep focussed on the end game, to provide a consistently better service or product offering than already exists. But just believing it isn’t enough, you have to have a scientific plan and competitive edge which separates you and existing competitors.

Ask yourself, what things have I already which help enable us to be the best?

What are you passionate about? Is this new business going to make you incredibly satisfied? If it is purely a vehicle to make you money, I guarantee it will not work. You have to have enjoyment first, which comes from passion and determination, long before the success and the financial gains.

Mohammed Ali said, “I run on the road, long before I dance under the lights.”  Although he became incredibly successful and rich through his boxing, he focussed on his training and the outcome of each fight, never on the purse.
What drives the economic engine? Is it sensible to make this investment? Do we have a competitive advantage with cost savings if we enter a particular industry?

For example, UKFast entering the world of Cloud Hosting makes perfect sense. Although the investment of £500,000 seems on the steep side, we already have the technical know how and infrastructure in place to run this type of business. It therefore becomes very easy to bolt on this sort of new venture.

Data centre space is another good one. We already have the expertise to be the best at it. We are incredibly passionate about the thought of improving resilience and customer care and does it make financial sense? Absolutely, we will save £1.5m to £2m each year as a direct result.

Do we venture into data centres? Already have done is the answer.

Using the same principal, on ideas that have not gone so well. The mobile phone division of UKFast.

Can you be the best at it? Yes absolutely and we were.
Are you passionate about it? Not really, driven by the fact that we were making money.
Was it financially the best thing to do? Although it made good sense to go into this venture at the time, on hind sight, yes we had a competitive advantage writing the software that made this company immensely successful, the business model was too far removed from UKFast’s hosting model.

Business to consumer vs. business to business. This one fundamental difference made it impossible to be financially viable. Our entire existing infrastructure was designed to manage the business to business relationship. We underestimated the amount of work involved in the change management.

The same applies to UKFast’s entry into the broadband arena.

Can we be the best? Yes and we were undoubtedly. We were too good and the strain this put on the existing support team was not sustainable.

Was it financially viable? NO! It was a disaster. BT had designed a business model from hell. The only winner was BT, the customer, the supplier, everyone lost out.

Were we passionate about it? No, we love hosting and we love the fact that people appreciate what we do. Supplying broadband which was effectively turned into a commodity by the telco’s (BT, Pipex, AOL) was not fun and we were too small to roll out a business model that was incredibly niche.

The result: Doomed! Luckily we were able to foresee this and we sold off our connections to a small business who specialised in this area. We were very careful not just to “ditch” customers as they also had hosting with us and they were incredibly important.

So the 3 circles principal is key to tackling the unknown. And if it is good enough for the businesses like Gillette, Nike and the others I mentioned earlier, it is a good enough litmus test for me too. Try it with your business ventures past, present and of course the import ones, the future ones!

Go have fun.

Bank managers, strategic advisors accountants, business consultants have all said to me at some point, all small businesses are about the “owner-operator” and take them away and they fail.

I have always hated this attitude and could never understand it. Until today and after sitting with fellow business people and for a change I was the MD of the biggest business there, I could see how they arrived at their theory.

We were discussing training. A subject I am passionate about and one I do not feel I am an expert at as I have so much more I want to learn. Nevertheless I have helped shape a training department at UKFast which seems to be pretty unique.

The general consensus from these owner operators was that you should outsource your training, do it once or twice a year at the most and do it externally.

This pretty much summed up peoples unanimous opinion.

When I explained my position, people were horrified. I explained that I agree with taking people away, and I am such a fan of this we bought a hotel in Wales to conduct intense training and team building programmes.

I seemed to strike a nerve and a few of the woman attacked my philosophy one saying “I wouldn’t want to work for your organisation if it were the last in the world” and another stated “you cant make people go up a mountain.”

I was amazed as Tony Fogett of a very successful web design business said  “none of may staff would ever do team building” as though it were an alien exercise. He laughed saying “we just go to the pub!”

I explained that this was a team building exercise too, the only difference was his involved alcohol and ours involved fresh air and adrenalin.

Ironically one of my team members who was a massive fan of our Snowdon trips (long before we bought the Castell Cidwm estate and Llyn Cwellyn) went to work for Code, Tony’s business. She had discussed with me coming back to UKFast however sadly this is against our company policy, she cited the team spirit as one of the best things about UKFast and one of the things she missed 

But the regular sessions in the pub obviously work for Tony as his business in my opinion is incredibly successful especially for the creative market place.

I realised though the vast difference in outlooks around the table seemed to be in direct relationship with the success of peoples businesses. 

The other business owners dismissed my theory as “inappropriate” as UKFast has over 100 employees. Even though our businesses were similar ages and Gail and I started UKFast with just the 2 of us and no staff!

The difference is simple and businesses who adopt this principal grow, businesses who don’t run the risk of failure when they grow.

‘If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” There is another great quotation from someone (I think Jim Collins of Stamford University) “people respect what you inpsect.”

Measuring training is imperative too. We test staff before and after their training sessions so we know how much they have learned, this enables us to measure the trainer’s performance.

We have a TV department, which films all our sessions. Each film is edited and placed in their personal dashboard where they can download them on to their company supplied ipods.

We include funny (not for public consumption) videos too of office parties, charity events and people tipping over in canoes at the training camp.

Two things are important to me. Alignment and engagement.

We start, believe it or not with engagement, hence the team building stuff where everyone gets to have fun, cry, break bread together and get what we call cyan coloured (UKFast) blood. The second is just as important and that is aligning everyone to the common message. Whatever department you are in at UKFast  you need to understand that excellence is the standard and nothing else is acceptable.

We were once described by a competitor who rang me up to complain about a member of my staff who had telephoned and emailed a customer of his, as a sales and marketing organisation. I think he meant it as a dig, however I was deeply complimented by this.

I have always felt we were weak in this area and therefore slow off the mark, however he and other competitors had begun to notice more activity in their sector from our team and from prospects talking about UKFast.

All this energy and passion came from training. The same training that enabled us to recruit 30 graduates in one day and have them up and running in less than 1 month.

I believe your best training is in house. You will already have champions in a variety of areas. Use the resources you have around you, have focus groups and share knowledge. You don’t have to spend huge sums of money with consultants. Often the best sessions are the simplest ones even impromptu.

A study from the writers of the book “the extra mile” cited training as the single biggest reason why people stay and leave organisations. Recognise this and act on it and I’ll see you out on the battlefield.

I always say, “well I’ll be leaving work at about 7pm this evening.” I hear this question 3 times a week.

I think it is important to know where you are going. Businesses need direction. I am a great believer in goals and raised a laugh at the How-Do convention recently when I admitted my wife and I have a “50 year plan.”

But why not? I work on the principal that you need to know where you are going. What is wrong with mapping out your life to when you are in your 90’s. You are far more likely to get to a desired location or destination if you have thought about it prior to setting out. One thing is for sure, I know we will be together as we are both integral to it.

What happens when you go shopping without a clear understanding of what you want to come home with. My wife’s wardrobe was littered with rubbish when I first met her. Shopping was haphazard and directionless and she probably felt this was part of the fun. Ask her now how much more fun shopping is, especially when she brings me along.

So when do you sell your business? You have to have made something worth selling first of all. This needs a plan in its own right. When we set up UKFast we were tiny. The smallest company in the fastest growing business environment and for years no one knew we existed.

But we had a plan, and we were sticking to it. And when the internet bubble burst and businesses were dropping out of the sky affected by the calamity we just carried on regardless. And still no one really knew who we were.

And over the years we have readdressed the plan, yet we still continue to stick to it. Even during the recession we felt it was more important to keep firmly on track than to falter.

And as the business got bigger so do our goals. Our latest 5 year plan includes a target and MAP to hit £100m turnover. Now as this plan unfolds people are begging to take note of us.

The problem with our initial plans were they were too small, and therefore so was the outcome. You get what you focus on so in my opinion you are better aiming higher. If you miss you still are probably better off than you would have been if you’d been conservative.

But on the journey of growing your business, when do you sell? UKFast is already worth far more than we anticipated in the first plan we wrote. So surely I’d be happy to sell?

For me it is not about the money.  It is about the game. I love work. I love people and I love competition. If I didn’t work at UKFast what would I do? I’d be bored sitting on a beach for more than 22 minutes. I don’t drink and I am consumed by learning.

For me, you sell when you stop learning or when you cannot learn at the speed you need to, to continue driving your business in a controlled fashion.  I am fortunate to work alongside my wife. When we have problems we are able to tackle them together.

We are on a weekend business trip and I am writing this, she is tackling a “too heavy for me” book on Balanced scorecard management, whilst we fly from Rome to Amsterdam for our next meeting.

If you have a business partner that is this close you are able to take on much more than if you do it alone.

What is most fun about UKFast is that we are having to learn at such a pace it is incredibly exciting. We take it so seriously that each year we review our goals together in the Maldives and have the final week of a 3 week break where we then strategise and plan for the future.

We have literally hit every goal we have set, and the crazy ones which take time all have a MAP (massive action plan) and we monitor their progress.

So when do you sell you business? In my opinion only when you are bored. But if you are bored, simply pick up a book and find another challenge. There is always something out there waiting to tax our hungry minds. After all isn’t that why we are in business in the first place?

Great question, and there is no right or wrong answer.

I explained that I have tried and failed many different things. The important thing in my opinion as an entrepreneur is to dust yourself off and have another go. Great entrepreneurs are resilient, they don’t know how to give up, they are prepared to push the boundaries and if they fail they do not see this as a negative emotion. In fact failure to a receptive mind means you are learning.

If you are going to try something new I think it should compliment what you are doing in other areas. Venturing into completely unknown territory carries more risk and therefore should warrant more research.

I enjoy new challenges, however I don’t see myself as a big risk taker. I have never had the luxury of huge sums of money to invest in new projects so the downside to most of my ventures is never a particularly alarming one.

We are currently venturing into the data centre arena, and although this now does involve millions of pounds of investment, it is a “related area” and therefore compliments what I already do elsewhere in the dedicated hosting industry.

It actually not only allows us to improve the quality of the service we currently receive, it also saves us millions of pounds each year of money which for the past decade has been growing some very happy businesses in Manchester and London.

I am not sure my current suppliers of data centre space will share my excitement. UKFast makes a very attractive anchor tenant however this sort of diversification is one I wholeheartedly recommend.

If you can provide a service where you are already paying considerable sums to a supplier and in our case competitor to boot, this should help you in your decision of where to diversify.

We once diversified in to the mobile phone arena specialising in Orange phones. We were good at it and we got about 20,000 customers in our first year trading. However it was so far removed from our hosting product. We were selling Oranges network when we had our own UKFast.

We got out of this industry after Orange put pressure on us to stop bulk text messaging to win business. Companies like Carphone Warehouse and other high street retailers were complaining that we had an unfair advantage. Our route to market was incredibly effective and hit our customer right at their heart. A simple text message encouraging them to use UKFast was all it took.

It worked famously until one day I received a phone call from my distributer saying that we had just inadvertently sent messages to the board of directors of Orange themselves during a board meeting. The message said, “upgrade your mobile phone with the latest Nokia on the Orange network, call UKFast now to find out more.”

Orange were fuming, mainly because they hadn’t thought of this themselves. They switched us off.

I could have targeted them and switched hundreds of thousands of Orange customers to other networks who our distributer put us in touch with, however this wasn’t our style.

We had invested huge sums of money and a great deal of time. We weren’t just the fastest growing supplier of Orange phones back in those days, we were the best. Each customer of ours also received confirmation text messages with Royal Mail special delivery tracking codes so they could know where their parcel was. Royal Mail even printed UKFast on the special delivery bags next to their name as we were shipping so many. They even sent us our own van each day.

Quitting whilst you are ahead is not quitting. Ironically Orange came back to us weeks later and asked me personally if I’d redesign their systems and manage their call centre. Someone had produced a report comparing all the dealers, distributers and Orange themselves. UKFast came out above everyone for the best customer satisfaction and retention rate.

The mess Orange are now in is indicative of their poor management and decision-making ability.  A decade on they still are not using the technologies that we brought to that industry. Shortly after we left, Oftel banned the use of direct text messages as a form of introductory communication as too many businesses jumped on our “banned” wagon: A shame really as they were exciting days. We would send out 20,000 text messages in a morning and sell 250 phones. The inbound phones went wild. If you were a visitor, staff member of a different division of UKFast or a prospective supplier, and were in our building when we pressed send, you were given a pad and pencil and told to answer the phone. Some of my funniest memories of this time include 2 bank managers caught up in the frenzy for a couple of hours locked in my office taking orders.

This was one example of diversification that was too far from our comfort zone, however I wouldn’t change this chapter for the world. We learnt everything we know now from this era.

The other actor was far less famous. Successful in his own right however on a much less grander scale. He was in a failure of a programme called Eldorado. A late night version of Crossroads. He was called Jude and he was a lovely guy, and he was dating my flat mate Caroline.

The argument was over “what constitutes a proper actor?” Ashley had touched on the subject of “how much you earn?” and tied that into your credibility as an actor, Also “how well known you were?” also cropped up too. Two things that immediately elevated him above Jude, as Ashley was being paid £7000 per week (a footballers salary in those days) to play the prince in Aladdin in Oxford.

Jude was quick to point out this recent role hardly made him Dustin Hofman. And so the argument continued. Although Ashley probably won the argument through pigheaded stubbornness and the fact that it is very difficult to discredit someone who is very successful and to Ash’s credit, he was, Jude definitely had the last laugh.

I also wonder what impact that discussion played on Jude’s future success as he was incredibly upset, passionate, determined to prove himself right that night. Yet sadly I never saw Jude again after he and Caroline stopped seeing each other later that year and Ash moved back to Adelaide and I am ashamed to say we never kept in contact.

A few years ago on a long-haul flight, I asked Gail what she was watching. I switched on my TV and joined her. I commented “that looks really like an old pal I used to know from yeas ago, Jude.”

She responded quickly saying “it’s Jude Law, He is one of the most famous up and coming actors in Hollywood.” I thought it cant be yet the more I watched I realised it was him. I remembered the argument in my flat all those years ago. I remembered what Jude had said.

“Mark my words, I may not be as successful as you yet, however I guarantee you, I will be the most famous British actor ever to break the US. I will live in Hollywood and if money gauges your success, then I promise you I will definitely be the biggest success.”

This was an emotional rant and left Ashley’s girlfriend who was sat on my piano singing and I cheering “go Jude!” as most people never confronted Ashley who was renowned for his headstrong tenacity.

I don’t know whether Jude Law wrote down his goals, I don’t know how much he actually planned his journey, however that night he was coherent and his determination did not sound spontaneous, quite the contrary, it sounded well thought out and everyone in that room that night believed him, so much so that when he went to bed we carried on the discussion about his passion and determination.

Earl Nightingale said “the most powerful thing in the world is a single thought.” It all starts with a thought and then develops. Although it has taken me more than 10 years to see the link between that passion and determination that night and the actual success in the flesh I cannot think for a moment that it is coincidence.  Jude Law is one in a million, the difference is that I have heard thousands of times people stating that they are going to do “such and such” but they lack the conviction, and without that belief a very different journey awaits.

The other girl in the room that night, Julia Worsley went on to be a very successful singer and one of Cameron Macintosh’s favourites making a real mark in the West End. She sang in Evita and became a friend of Madonna after getting the role as Madonna’s sister in the film Evita. Julia was a huge fan of Madonna and always said that she felt an affinity with her. It was later confirmed when Madonna faxed my house with a note for Jules arranging to hook up when she was coming to the UK.

Ashley failed to live up to his accelerated early start and shrank into insignificance in acting terms lost in Australia.

Musically I have not hit any of my goals I set in my early life, yet they are not forgotten and at some point I will rebuild my recording studio and reassemble some of my old friends for the next chapter. Meanwhile I have one focus and that is UKFast. It is as exciting as composing and conducting an orchestral overture and all consuming.

Is there more to goal setting than meets the eye?

What if goal setting was a scientific art form? What if you could literally pinpoint your every move in the future and design the outcome of every turn years before you arrive there, long after the memory of even setting the goal.

Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it. Yet my wife and I have built a business on this very principal.

I am in Amsterdam at present and yesterday went to Anne Franks house to visit a very important place preserved in our history. The one thing I came away with is the memory of something written on the wall.

“I have a goal, to be free from this place and to dance again and to breathe the air.”

This may appear to be an innocuous quote in amongst much more profound remarks, however it is the word goal that strikes me as interesting.

In a world long ago that I care not to even remember let alone imagine being a part of where countless millions did not survive, there is one child who defied the laws of everything that was controlling the world at that time in war torn Europe.

She had a goal and she wrote it down and she not only survived years of German occupation against all the odds she then went on to influence millions of people with her writing, long after she died. You might argue that her goal never worked, as she died in Bergen-Belsen in March 1945, less than 2 months before the end of the war. However she died of typhus and not at the hands of the Germans. She also lived an amazing life and for the short time on this planet her goal kept her determined and focussed on surviving, which she did for a great deal longer than most in her situation. Her father who is the most remarkable man who lived till the ripe old age of 91, it was he who was responsible for inspiring his daughter and family. He was the only one of the 8 to survive the holocaust.

My job here is not to convince you of goal setting though, I already believe in it and we have thousands of examples of it working literally to the letter.

A great example of this manifested itself this morning when Gail and I went through our goals we set on the 7^th January earlier this year. (2009) Gail brought my attention to a goal which was written simply:

“Weekend Amsterdam + Rome”
As we were sat in Amsterdam in the lobby of The Grand Hotel reading this we were able to tick this one off, however when we wrote this goal what we had really meant to write was a weekend away in either Rome or Amsterdam.

What is the likelihood of hitting an obscure goal like this, 2 cities in different countries thousands of miles apart, different climates. Not the sort of trip you’d plan deliberately.

Even though we had written this goal down 9 months earlier and had also forgotten it, a very strange thing had happened.

On the Saturday morning we were flying to Rome. I was not over-enamoured by the idea of a weekend queuing and site seeing, however I arrived in Rome with an open mind. We arrived at the hotel by the Spanish Steps, however there was some sort of rally on and the place was crowded to say the least. That night Gail and I decided to take the plane to a much more chilled destination Amsterdam after a lovely dinner marred only by the chanting of a distant crowd in the square adjacent to the hotel. The plane and pilots were still in Rome for the night, so Gail called the pilot and arranged to meet them on the runway the next morning. So we hitched a lift with them on their way back to the UK.

It worked perfectly, we escaped the chaos of Rome had a few relaxed days in Amsterdam, hit a goal in to the bargain, to the letter.

So as my wise old Gran used to say, “Be careful what you wish for!

Google the internet giant that grew from a garage start up in San Francisco has a competitor. As an underdog myself in the hosting world (next to rivals Rackspace) I have to favour the smaller player.

It is not often that you can refer to one of Bill Gate’s enterprises as a smaller entity.

But smaller for how long?

A little like a boxer who smiles at his opponent in the ring when he feels a punch that cuts him to the quick, he makes too much effort to hide the pain. Recently Google have been sparring in similar style scoring points with Microsoft over petty issues. In my opinion they merely give Bing the limelight and raise their credibility.

The signing of a 10 year deal though between Microsoft and Yahoo must hurt. These are 2 very large competitors joining forces, sharing resources. Both retaining the side of the bargain they do best. Yahoo running the PPC, (the model that Google plagerised) and bing with the search engine, who surprisingly is faster that Google.

These extra milliseconds set Google out from other pretenders over the years, yet the secret is out, it is common news to those of us involved with SEO and dedicated hosting.

Google have to be concerned. If you break down the traffic that all the engines get separately it doesn’t seem that threatening, with Bing’s share of all UK traffic at 0.44%. Combine it with Yahoo’s 0.99% and add in all the other MSN related traffic and it reaches a staggering 17.1%.

(Source: http://www.webcop.co.uk/resources/news/bing-s-surprise-growth-in-july)

It is interesting that MSN hasn’t made a move to acquire search providers that already use Googles’ search capacity such as Ask and AOL as this would increase their distribution and reduce Googles’ at the same time. I am confident that they will be talking, whether a deal can be reached or not, if Microsoft want to take on Google this acquisition accelerates their growth curve and takes out a further healthy chunk of the market.

On a wider international scale, I’m sure all the major search providers are thinking about the global strategy of getting Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia involved as the global distribution battle commences.

Yet there are those amongst us who feel the need to talk about their goals. What they are going to achieve and what they nearly did. I am talking of the ones that you have a sneaking suspicion are “all talk.” Yet, they keep talking and that is all they seem to do.

And on the journey because of their gregarious nature and confidence they have a tendency to land great jobs and rise through the food chain. Yet they never take the plunge themselves.

I know a few people who fall into this category. I dont need to name them as my aim is not to embarrass them. It is something that intrigues me however.

One person in particular on the out side, has all the skills necessary to run a business, yet for some strange reason cannot take the plunge. Even when offered all the cash necessary to set up a business in a sector where they previously have a very successful record, this person chose the easy option. A slightly higher salary and share options (Fake shares as I call them!) over a slightly lower basic, true  50% ownership and zero cash investment from themselves.

Why does some one take what at first seems the easy path, yet it is a path they have trodden before only to find it leads to redundancy and ends in tears. Once the business is established you are a very expensive luxury and extremely expendable.

After selling my first business to Granada TV once I had integrated the 2 businesses and I had trained all the staff I was no longer needed. I was quickly squeezed out. It was a lesson that meant I could never work for another organisation again.

So why do they never take the plunge. Personally I believe it is because they are not true level 5 leaders. What is a level 5 leader? It is a person who shows the correct set of skills and characteristics to lead a business of any type through all seasons.

Yet a level 5 leader is not the sort of person that traditionally gets the job of the MD or other directorships in the UK and US. We seem to employ the loudest, most confident, best communicators, yet ironically these are never the best choice. Yet they rise to the top becasue they are more pushy than their fellow colleagues.

Often these sort of people want to take the credit for all the good that happens, yet when there is a problem, they are quick to point the finger and blame anyone but themselves. A level 5 leader is more likely to apportion luck to their success and be relatively shy when it comes to public speaking or taking the credit.

I suppose it is also about  what makes people tick. Their “significance” as Tony Robbins puts it. The person I am referring to in this article is very happy to have the lifestyle, the clothes, watches all the trappings of a senior director, yet does not want the responsibility or real control of the whole business.

So if you are put off by becoming a businessman or woman because you are not as confident as others, this is not a bad thing. In fact you are in good company.

A great friend of mine, Dan Innes has finally set up and gone it alone after a decade of growing someone else’s business in London. His new business Innesco is already super successful as he has a long client list of those strong relationships he has spent years developing. Dan merely needed the confidence to make that final push.

I gave up ranting and pushing him, knowing he needed to find his own feet in his own time. Last year at his wedding in Bath I said to my wife, “there you go, he will be self employed with in a year from now.”

A great man like Dan simply needed a great woman at his side. When you have someone you love to this extent, being in business suddenly becomes easier. You have someone to work for, someone to build a future for.

If you are not destined for the madness of entrepreneurship however, do not let this stress you out. I do not think any the less of my friend who prefers to work for other people than himself. Definitely not. When the businessman sits at home worrying about the bank, the tax or the detail, the managing director or senior manager is still able to switch off!

One thing I can say though, for Dan embarking on this new journey, “It is a lot like the day when you set off and rowed across the atlantic. You had a goal and a purpose. To that end, you achieved what you set out to achieve. The same applies in business. Set your goals out clearly and stick to them. Revisit them regularly, take nothing for granted. Have fun on your journey and good luck to you sir.”

If you are considering being in business and going it alone, take a pen and paper. Draw a line down the centre. On one side write down all the reasons why you want to be in business, and on the other the reasons why you have not done so yet.

If you find yourself procrastinating  and looking for reasons not to, seek help, but never give up. It’s easy.

My goddaughter just achieved 4 A’s. Incredible! A far cry from my terrible attempt.

Yet you dont need A level results to be successful.

Here is my itinerary for yesterday:

• BBC Radio Manchester 7.30am
• BBC Online photo shoot and interview City Tower, Piccadilly 12.00 pm
• Channel M 4pm News

It certainly sounds impressive. Yet the only reason they all wanted to interview me, was because 23 years ago, on my A level results day, I got 2 U’s (That’s unclassified)

I joked on the radio, “thanks for telling the world.” Yet in a funny sort of way I am quite proud of this achievement. It proves that we are all different. Academic exams are only recognising a certain type of intellect. In school and further education, we don’t seem to put much importance on common sense, practical skills, goal orientation.

All my truly finically successful friends failed dismally when it came to exams. The ability to sit still in a classroom is something great entrepreneurs seem to lack. Yet when they come out of school, they fly. Why is that?

Sadly, I don’t have the magic formula to explain what it is. I am confident it is NOT coincidence. Yet it may be related to the fact that a great many entrepreneurs are told, time after time, that they will be failures.

This gives you an easy starting point.

1. you want to prove that person wrong
2. you cant fail as there is nowhere lower to go!

So as I said during my 3 interviews. If you have failed yhour A levels, don’t worry. It is for a reason. there is something better for you out there. If you have not got your desire results to go to university, don’t worry. Get a job. Get trained up and if you are smart and you work hard, you will be light years ahead of your friends who go off to university.

They will come out with massive debt (£25,000 if you are lucky) you on the other hand, should have a house, car and serious lifestyle by then.

I remember back that far ago. I got my first house when I was still 19 years old. It was a goal I had set as a very young child, to beat my father who had got his first one when he was around 24.

When graduates come to UKFast, I do not look at their grades, I look for their sporting influences and their part time jobs. A 1st is the same as a 2:2 where I come from. It is now down to how hard you are going to graft.

So don’t be despondent. Pick up the phone and get a job. Find a company that offers comprehensive training or why not set up your own.

What have you go to loose. You are going to be £25,000 in debt anyway. Surely with that headstart you can build a business.

Good luck.

Lawrence Jones (the only letters after my name) UU
Managing Director
UKFast

I am not one for being dazzled by stars of any type. I grew up in my 20’s with some very famous friends and girlfriends, Ashley Paske from Neighbours, Craig Charles from Red Dwarf and it taught me that fame comes with a very expensive price tag. You loose all sense of privacy and there is literally no where to hide.

And the more famous you become, the bigger the price tag! Michael Jackson is a good example of this. A man who became so infamous he not only lost his personal life, he also lost all sense of reality and the fun that we take for granted of just being normal.

As Jacko found out, the media can flip you in minutes from fame to social famine. And if you are lucky, back-again; sadly a little late as he had already passed away.

Sitting next to Sarah, The Duchess of York at dinner last night discussing Michael Jackson I clearly struck a chord. She asked me my opinion on the funeral service / concert. I explained my point of view about how I feel the press dictate a great deal and that they are quick to forget how much damage they may do, yet they blow hot and cold whenever it suits. To me it was more concert than funeral. But that is what Jackson was a “showman” so why not go out on a positive note.

The dinner was in aid of a community project that the duchess is proactively supporting and she and her team (which includes locals from the Wythenshaw area) are doing a sterling job in Manchester helping to establish a community centre which houses a gym down stairs.

It struck a chord with me as I arrived in Manchester 24 years ago, with a few pounds in my pocket and no friends or real home to live in. I remember the loneliness of standing on your own two feet, too proud to consider returning to my little town in North Wales. My father had always told me I’d be a failure, and funnily enough this probably forced me in to a position where I had to survive.

But yesterday, meeting Simon, a young lad of 25 from the area where they are investing their energy, he is one of the team building the community centre project made me realised how lucky I’d been.

I was lucky, I had had a very good education (yet I managed to fail nearly every academic exam I sat!) and I also was taken in a after a year or so later by relatives who took pity on me; a then skin head in bedraggled clothes.
But not everyone is as lucky as that, how do you rise through the ranks when there is no one to show you the way. These days, I think it is even tougher for people leaving home. University actually puts you in debt so that is almost like a major set back when entering the grown up world. Personally skipping University did me know harm. As long as you keep learning keep striving to become better. I think the important thing is to keep away from trouble. As a young man it is easy to get sucked in with the wrong sort of people. It is almost uncool to hang around positive hardworking folk. Yet it is precisely these types you need as mentors to give you the direction you need.
Hats off to Sarah Ferguson. A megastar with her feet on the floor. A particularly likable one too. And to her team making the Duchess on the Estate documentary. It is refreshing to see others making a big difference, especially high profile ones as they are able to amplify their influence via TV with their relationship with the media.

For me, I wouldn’t swap anonymity for the world.

It is a difficult answer and to define one event as anyone in business will know it is a fast paced journey of peaks and troughs and no 2 days are alike. The most difficult challenge I face and continue to face is the pace I am required to develop.

10 years ago the skill set I had to set up a small business was very different to the one I now have running a multimillion pound organisation. That in itself presents challenges year after year.

I know if I’d walked into a business the size of UKFast 10 years ago, I could not have managed it. Yet I dont feel I have changed that much. However it is very easy to under estimate the experience you gain from being on hand day to day.

If I take a snap shot of me a decade ago and me now, along with the aging process on the outside, the inside is very different too. Eight years ago I was interviewed on Granada News by Lucy Meacock. Last night at the National Business Awards in the Hilton Hotel in Manchester Lucy Meacock was the presenter. We had a chat afterwards and she remembered Gail and I, however she could not believe how much we had changed over the years. It made me think, she is right, I just assume I am the same person. I often describe myself as a man with “no qualifications” and this may be true, however I now have experience, and that is priceless.

Jim Collins describes “great businesses” in Good To Great as having leaders who grow from  within. It makes perfect sense now. Experience out ranks qualifications.

So why then do some businesses grow faster than others? Is it safe to say people are gaining experience at different speeds. I think the answer is obvious. This then explains why businesses evolve at  different speeds. It is relative to the amount of learning and experience the entrepreneurs with in the business encounter.

One of the responsibilities Gail and I have at UKFast is to continue to learn and every year we regroup. We go off to the Maldives for a 3 week holiday. 2 weeks of family fun and 1 week of intense preparation for the year ahead. We write huge lists which fill books and we review the lists from previous years. And we tick off our accomplishments and those we miss we carry forward. Imagine a graph that is steadily rising. This upward curve represents everything we do in our lives. It is easy to peak and trough in life, so we then draw a horizontal line at the highest point we are at at present. This line now becomes the platform for continued growth. Anything below this line is considered an area of dissatisfaction, there is only one way to grow.

So if that means, if I had done 6 hours a week of exercise in 2008 and if we consider being in good shape important to maintaining our growth, I would set a goal to increase that to 7 or 8 hours.

We apply this principal to everything we do.

To be truly successful you have to be disciplined. On that journey to achieve whatever you set out in the early days, you will be tempted to ease off, take your eye off the ball, but I have never met a successful person who was not incredibly disciplined.

Take Lucy Meacock for example. She was employed to present the awards at the ceremony last night. Her schedule of responsibilities from her employers that night would involve arriving early for a rehearsal, and being ready to perform between the hours of 8 and 10 o’clock. During those hours she is on show. She will be required to perform her duties at the highest level. For that she will have received her fee and her rider.

Yet she is the consummate professional. Once the show had finished she took the trouble for the next 2 hours to walk around the entire room greeting and thanking everyone for coming. This is a discipline which not only made her successful but keeps her at this elevated level.

I will give you an example of a fallen star. Do you remember Victoria Wood? The comedian. In a previous life before hosting dedicated servers I had a small business that Granada aquired from me called MDC (The Music Design Company). I organised events. I was lucky enough to win the contract for a charity fund raiser, Christies for Cancer. I chose the venue, The Palace Hotel, Manchester (a place I later got married in).

I wanted Steve Coogan ( a then rising star) however Angela Rodden the MD insisted we went for Victoria Wood. Between her and my PA I was out voted. What a big mistake. Steve Coogan was a mega star by the time the event happened. They both commanded the same fee. £17,000 for the hour.

I should have known when I saw Victoria Woods rider. Her list of particulars was ridiculous. I had put on events for mega pop stars with smaller requirements.

We provided everything to the letter. The flowers (a particular length) were ready in her dressing room, the particular alcohol, the flesh coloured microphone that she taped to her forehead, the Steinway grand piano and the spot light that resembled a bomber tracking light from World War II, we did everything. 

I went to her dressing room and introduced myself. My God, what a rude woman! I politely explained that Angela (who had chosen her) was a massive fan, and would it be possible for her to have a photograph with her at some point before the end of the evening. It was a flat “no” “you have employed me to do a stage show, and that is what I am here to do!” or words to that effect.

We got the last laugh though, when she was doing her stand up, the sound engineers tripped over a wire and switched off the spot light mid act, which was being operated by Jonathan Bowers who is now UKFast’s communication director.

But this sort of attitude explains why Victoria Wood is no-longer on our screens. It is a great lesson, whatever your profession, always be professional. I have a rule that I only do business with people I admire or have the greatest respect for. If somebody’s standards slip in any way, ethically or performance wise , I will not want to do business with them. I have been known to turf suppliers out if they have not stuck to an agreement, either verbal or written. If you agree something, stick to it. Honour it at all costs.

I had a supplier who  cost me a great deal of embarrassment and stress not so long ago. When I confronted their acting MD on the matter, I was told to read the terms and conditions. He said “I think you will find we are doing everything we are contracted to do.”

Two weeks ago, I wrote a cheque for almost £3,000,000. That supplier who has had a monopoly in Manchester on the service he supplied is about to find he has a very passionate competitor in his midst. At a time when they are planning expansion, they are about to loose their biggest customer and find out they have an exodus of existing clients who we already have undertakings with that they are coming on board with our new venture.

Lack of professionalism isn’t a one off. People who are unprofessional are consistently unprofessional, day in day out. And, if you want to be successful, in whatever profession, stay alert and learn from everything that goes on around you. Be disciplined and be a great person. Follow these simple practices and you cant go far wrong. 

I’ll see you at the top! Or on that great journey.

Lawrence Jones @ UKFast

It is a good ice breaker and for those of us assessing the candidates, it starts to give you a snap shot of what is to come.

A young lady stood up, and I don’t have her name to hand and she described her momentous achievement as creating a small shop on ebay and selling a variety of things.

When she sat down, I immediately asked, “so why are you here?” At first I think she might of felt that I was criticising her at least I hope she realises that I was singling her out because she was clearly different.

Out of the 40 to 50 soon to be leaving education, she truly had done something momentous. She has taken a small amount of cash, purchased something, found a route to market, built a shop however rudimentary and started marketing a business. This woman, because in my eyes, she is no longer a young lady she is a business woman.

Now that I write this blog, I realise that I need to follow up  her progress and make sure she is given encouragement. So often entrepreneurs are discouraged from school, university throughout careers. Usually by people who wanted to do things themselves yet, they never followed through.

If you fall in to any of these categories, it is never too late. My parents left their jobs in their 40’s and bought a run down hotel. Some in the family described it as a midlife crisis. Even I, the eternal optimist questioned their sanity of selling a beautiful family home and giving up great careers to become owners of a semi-dilapidated hotel.

20 years on, how wrong was I and what a hotel. They now have the hotels on either side and it sleeps 100 people. It has an awesome reputation and a massive returning customer base.

Ironically the kick that triggered my father was doing my first years accounts. After tax, it transpired I had earned more than my mother who had been teaching for 20 years.

Last year a young lady came to be interviewed for the job of PA. As soon as I read her psychometric test results, I knew that she would make an excellent personal assistant. However I also realised that  she had the perfect profile of a fledgling business person.

Her test also identified that she would benefit from traveling and it sensed that she was in a bit of a dilemma. I confronted her on this matter and sure enough she was torn between “going travelling” with her boyfriend and starting a job.

I suggested that she should be decisive and as her profile suggested a job working for someone else may just drive her bananas.She just needed a little motivation.

Last week I got a telephone call asking for an appointment to meet with her and her now fiancee. They were back from their holiday, and they had formed a solid business idea and they were putting a plan together. They wanted my advice. I was honoured to meet with her and excited to be a small part in giving her the confidence for her to choose the correct direction of her life.

After a a couple of hours, it turned out, she and her fiancee are about to become UKFast clients and it is looking likely that we will designing and hosting their software to run their new business idea.
If you have a dream, dont lie in bed and procrastinate, or talk about your venture to your pals for years and years. Get a pen and paper and start writing lists, start goal setting. Start organising what you need for your new future. And OK, if it fails, guess what, you pick yourself up, brush yourself down, remember the lessons of the failure and start again. You keep doing this until you get it right.

If a baby is struggling to learn how to walk, do we give up on the baby? Does the baby give up? Never! They keep standing up and falling down until they perfect the art.

Yet as adults this is drummed out of us. We become fearful of what our peers think. A great entrepreneur is born out of simply not caring what those around them think. This in my opinion is why so many dysfunctional kids succeed where clever folk fail. A dysfunctional child is reminded all through their life how much of a failure they are. So it becomes easier to go it alone than be reminded of this throughout a professional career.

My fathers favourite line which stuck with me was “son, you will not even be able to hold down a bin mans job” it was said so much I believed him. So when the time came I did not dare attempt to get a job. Instead I became self employed by default.

All the big entrepreneurs that I know tell a similar story.

Ignore teachers, parents and your peers. Get out and have a go! What is the worst that can happen. Especially whilst you are young and in a recession. In a climate like today’s there isn’t a more perfect time to cut your teeth.

Good luck!

Last year we recruited 7 new graduates. A year on, 5 of them have worked out and are still with UKFast. The 5 that remain have been so successful, this year we are recruiting 20 more.

Regardless of the economic climate we need new recruits. The universities are the obvious choice. And although there are no specific courses (yet) for the sort of training we require, a university graduate comes to the table, keen to learn and enthusiastic.

Interestingly this years candidates are far more flexible and willing to take on just about anything. In previous years the graduates lean towards the sexier job titles like marketing and PR, even though often these in reality involve a huge amount of organisational and administrative skills. This year, with fewer jobs available  we didn’t offer job titles, simply the opportunity to join a great company and try all the departments and on that journey, we can see where their fortes lie.

It is too easy to pigeon hole candidates on how they interview, where they will eventually reside within the company, and although we have fun guessing, we are not so arrogant to assume that we know best. My job, is simply to get the correct people in the business. What they end up doing is almost irrelevant; we can worry about that later.

If you are a graduate looking for a career. Be persistent and if you cant get a job easily, offer yourself out for experience. Do it for free if necessary. Get a foot in the door and make yourself indispensable. 

Often you dont need the qualifications you have just earned, but you will need the desire and enthusiasm. Do not fear failure. If you are turned down, you are destined for something greater. Good luck and enjoy the hunt!

So why a sport sponsorship deal?

It was not an easy decision spending millions of pounds of a hard earned marketing budget in one go, with the recession still firmly gripping society however I felt it important to take the opportunity and be decisive. Its a 3 year deal and when an opportunity as large as this comes up, in my opinion you grab it with both hands.

It is also important to look beyond the economic downturn. The credit crunch will not last forever and it is important to stand by what you believe in. For those fans who go to all the home games, you will know that UKFast gets a mention every time Charlie Hodgson scores. A few seasons back, he injured himself and although we were offered a replacement player, we stuck with Charlie. He came back, stronger, fitter and in my opinion is one of the greatest fly-halves in today’s tough game.

So when McAfee wavered, I made sure we had a window where we were able to negotiate without interruption.

I have had a few chats with Brian Kennedy, and he is grateful for the support and for the fact that there are others in the Manchester and Northwest business community who understand and believe in what the Sharks are doing.

It is the work the Sharks do team building in schools and with kids which sealed it for us. It is so easy to disengage and get transfixed on your financial goals and loose site of what is really important. Gail and I put as much emphasis on hitting personal goals as we do the financial ones, and this had been born from a discussion a decade ago, when First Software were on the shirts “one day, we’ll be main sponsors.”

10 years on, the Sharks, UKFast partnership is more than a logo on a shirt. It gives us an opportunity to say thank you to Manchester and the surrounding community. It is the fun part of being an entrepreneur which enables us to do something as exiting as this.

Just cant wait for the season to start now!

Mid recession, with no clear understanding of how long is the tunnel or how dark it might get, I am drawn back to the hypnotic clouds.

There are some things in life you can’t predict or influence, “weather” you want to or not. But do these unpredictable elements stop you from going about your normal business or day to day lives. Of course not. Only in extreme cases, but even these are “blips” and they cannot halt progress.

I am reminded of Earl Nightingale and his anology of the ship. He describes the damage caused by a ship in a harbor cut loose without a captain, crew, charts or destination. He then describes the same vessel, but this time with a captain, a crew a destination and therefore a purpose. The vessel will reach it’s destination every time. It will seldom be on the exact course, the currents and wind will do their best to divert them. However their collective purpose is stronger than the outside elements.

Just like the plane overhead. It’s destination firmly programmed in to the captain’s head and the onboard computers. The elements are constantly changing, but the clear path is set.

I set a path a few years ago, and every day I tread closer towards my goal. Some days slower than others I might add, but I carry on unperturbed. One of my intentions was to continue learning in order to keep myself interested and able to manage our rapidly growing responsibilities. And even though I am forced to change my location as the rain starts to spit, my vision is not spoiled by the change of scenes.

Far from it in this case. One of my goals is to surround myself with successful people so I can learn from them. I think my wife took this too literally and booked us into a place called The Lodge. Sir Richard Branson’s private Ski Chalet in Verbier Switzerland.

Although Richard isn’t here this week it is a real eye opener to meet some of his team and to see how real everything he has created is. And to realise  just how achievable it is to set and follow similar goals.

So we take a couple of hours a day on the slopes carving our future strategies in our heads before cataloguing, discussing, arguing, debating our future in these sumptuous surroundings.

I realise  that not everyone can afford to take time out in such lavish style. However you do need to take time out! However you do it, it can be in a garden shed as long as you get uninterrupted time to yourself. The important thing is you have the time to reflect and think about where you have come from, what you have learned, and where you want to get to and what you might encounter on the journey ahead.

Planning and knowing your outcome in the reverse order are the two most important factors that separate the Bransons from the Brainless.

“So where do I go and how do I do it?”

Personally I always head for the mountains. At home in Wales, we have been lucky enough to find ourselves a house and lake in the Snowdonia National Park. It is a place where mobile phones aren’t banned, they simply wont work!

Before the Lakehouse , I’d put on a rucksack, pack it full of beer, squeeze in a tent and enough provisions and off I’d go. My first weekend away with Gail who is now my wife, was in a serious thunderstorm where we camped at the top lake on Snowdon.

It rained so hard that breakfast turned to soup and we had to pitch the tent on a steep slope to stop it from filling with water.

But I’d set myself a goal years earlier, I’d find the perfect partner when I was still poor and she would be resilient, determined and kind.

I got more than I bargained for. She indeed became my partner in every sense, wife and business. Yes she had all the traits, and my friends who know me would laugh saying, she needs to be resilient and determined to put up with me!

So what do I mean when I say I got more than I bargained for? Well, I’d set the goal to find Gail whilst I was still poor. A fundamental flaw in goal setting.

“You have to be careful what you wish for” my Gran always used to say. She must have been on a Tony Robbins course!

What I should have set was to simply find the perfect woman. As a result, I remained “poor” and unsuccessful until I met her.

This is not superstition. This is simple programming of your brain. Whatever you ask for you get, whatever you focus on you will feel. This is how seriously I take goal setting now.

To give you an example of a goal I set as a child, “one day I will have a house in the mountains by a lake.”  I also set a burning desire to have a home that was big enough for everyone in my family to enjoy.

Gail found the perfect place amazingly less than 2 miles from the summit of snowdon, with an estate that has a 250 acre lake and the properties combined are big enough to sleep 28 people.

Coincidence? No, I don’t think so. I remember not being able to afford the fee at the Snowdon car park, plus I have too many cases of other goals for this to be coincidence.

It is worth noting that every super successful entrepreneur that I know follows the same key principals. Be very descriptive about what it is you intend on achieving, be bold and don’t hold back.

So instead of trying to switch off from your business at the weekend, get in your car or on a plane. Get a note book and pen and take some time out to pat yourself on the back for all that you have achieved and focus on Stage II.

Your business journey consists of many rungs on a very tall ladder. You determine how high you go. You can get off at any time if you get vertigo like Nixon of MoneySuperMarket.com, or you can keep climbing new ladders. Or in Bransons case, when you run out of ladders to climb on this earth, go Galactic. All I can say in his wake, is “Go Branson!”

And to fellow aspiring entrepreneurs like myself, never stop learning, never stop pushing, and certainly never stop trying.

Nothing should distract you from the path you set and don’t be hypnotised by events surrounding the economy. Your purpose will outlive any economic downturn.

I blogged a few weeks back after Rob Williams from Dolphin Music  died on the mountains where we are now.It is humbling to be reminded that life is so short. So get up, stop procrastinating.

All you need is pen, paper and you have a purpose.

There is a view that politics and business should not mix, however as politicians directly affect every aspect of our working life sometimes it is a little hard to be a spectator; especially when you see people in the highest office in the country behaving in an intolerable way.

In my opinion it is the job of a politician to influence their peers and the public and make changes that are solely for the “greater good.”

In recent years it has become increasingly more apparent that there are a few politicians who have put their own interests above those they stood to represent.

When a politician starts to use the powers of office to influence people unfairly this is an abuse of office. The same applies in every walk of life, in every profession, teaching, medicine, business, quite literally everywhere.

At the heart of every organisation, team or company are “core values”. In businesses these are quite often made public and businesses will recruit and train with these in mind.

These core values are key to the success of the organisation.

There is a danger that if core values are not stated clearly an organisation will flounder and bumble along until the more dominant traits appear, usually from the more dominant characters with in a business.

In the UK we have an obsession with putting the loudest most gregarious person in charge because society portrays them as leaders. In reality this is a fundamental flaw in the basics of leadership.

A great leader is someone who will not take the credit for success regardless of their importance within the achievement.  They are not people who crave or covet the limelight. They are potentially shy unassuming characters.

How different is the picture I am portraying to the stereotypical image you have from the Hollywood leader?

The other more deadly danger of when core values go horribly wrong is when you set values that you just cant live up to.

So often businesses suffer when taking a new CEO or high powered executive into an organisation. This is often because the vision of the new CEO and his core values are completely different to those which are instilled in to each and every one of the 1000’s of employees, who are eating, living and breathing the business values.

The conflict starts in the boardroom and diffuses through the business like a poison of contradiction and confusion.

The worst thing that can happen is when you have set values that you think other people will be impressed with or because your main competitor lives them. If the managing director or person at the top does not demonstrate these values in every aspect of their working lives, the structure below collapses.

For example  if one of your core values is “passion” and you, the CEO come in every day after 9.00am passing all your colleagues at their desks, you then take long lunches and leave before everyone else, people will question your passion and will either oust you or worse still water down their own previously high levels.

If you think loosing your job is worse at this point, you are not a leader. A leader will always want what is best for the organisation. A point worth considering in this case, a great leader would not be coming in after everyone else and leaving before the day is done!

A great leader leads from the front. The core values emanate from every pore and as such people follow and will stand by your side through thick and thin.

At times of adversity people will turn on a bad leader and fling themselves from the sinking ship, long before the outside world will know that the vessel is heading towards the rocks. An unscrupulous leader will happily throw comrades overboard before taking the brunt themselves.

I read in the Times yesterday that one of Gordon Browns chief advisors Damian McBride resigned over appalling behaviour towards fellow MP’s. Yet, Brown distanced himself from McBride’s actions claiming he didn’t know about his antics.

However you look at this, alarm bells ring for me.

If he knew, he should stand up, and take it on the chin. It is not proper conduct for a man in his position to use smear tactics to further his political gain.

If he didn’t know, there is a much deeper problem. For a senior advisor to think it acceptable to behave in such a manner, means that either the core values within Number 10 are potentially sinister and subversive which I find hard to believe or they have no clear defined values and as such, the louder, visibly stronger personality rises to the top and exerts his or her beliefs on the organisation, or simply runs wild.

In the case of McBride’s recent escapade, even by his standards, wild is an understatement. Yet I cannot believe he is alone in his guttural activities, even though he stands alone and takes the punishment for the others lurking in the shadows.

So what makes a great politician?

As a child, a chorister at Durham cathedral, being lucky enough to be invited to Westminster Abbey, I recall with absolute clarity looking up at the kind face of the statue that towered above me. I asked the verger next to me “who is that?”

“That young man is Wilberforce, one of the greatest Britons who ever lived.” 

So what made Wilberforce such an amazing politician? Simple, he aligned himself with what was right and proper for the good of mankind at the time.

He took the worst thing that he felt needed fixing, and no matter how unpopular this made him, he started to change the way people thought at that time in the UK, knowing one day, the rest of the world would follow.

Although in his life Wilberforce made a fraction of the 1000’s of changes modern politicians like Blair and Brown make, Wilberforce’s single great act has more positive impact on society than today’s politicians can ever dream of.

In a 1000 years will children be looking up to statues of Brown, sadly I think not!

Whether or not you are labour, tory or a political agnostic, the saddest thing for me and the question I ask is;

“How can men so privileged with such power, do so much towards achieving so little?”

—————end 

If you are not familiar with Wilberforce the philanthropist, have a read of his Wikipedia biography. He is a true icon who changed the world more than any other politician, he is the wheel in the evolution process that drove the vehicle one step closer towards true civilisation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce

Why is this? Is Google acknowledging that faster sites give the customer a better experience? Absolutely! Is traditional SEO as we know it dead or is it evolving at such a pace that it has caught a large proportion of the SEO enthusiasts and internet users by surprise? Could it be that speed has always been a major deciding factor in ranking and no one knew about it?

Or did we?

For the last 6 or 7 years we have been watching clients with faster machines and lean sites soar to the top of the rankings. Not only this we have witnessed that when sites have slowed down, through congestion at peak times or with network or routing failures, they loose traffic and consequently customers.

A fantastic example of this and believe me I have hundreds was a site called Cheapest Flights.co.uk. The entrepreneur, Andy Speight, who set this up, built one of the fastest growing travel web sites in just a couple of years. Its growth was so impressive it attracted attention from TravelCare who ended up buying the business for millions. We had extensive meetings with TravelCare over their change-management procedure, as they decided to move the site to their in-house datacentre as part of the cost savings after the acquisition.

What they underestimated was all of Speights reseach and the lengths he and UKFast engineers and R&D team had gone to with regards to the hosting environment Cheapestflights was on. Speight had truly pushed the boat out, he deduced that slow downs at certain times during the day had a direct effect to his business with reductions in sales. He instructed UKFast to build him the fastest solution we had, load balanced, clustered, it had everything.

The results were phenomenal, his traffic went through the roof and the customer experience improved dramatically resulting in higher customer numbers, leads and direct conversion rates. Each time he upgraded the solution, the results just kept getting better.

I received a telephone call first thing one Monday morning from a very angry director of Travel Care. I was very distressed to hear that there was something radically wrong with the cheapestflights web site and that orders from their website were down massively. We take great pride in providing the very best service at all times even when clients are moving away. We have an astonishing rate of customers who return after leaving so we are careful to never burn bridges. I called my IT director immediately.

Neil Lathwood was perplexed. He is a lot more pragmatic than me. He simply called me back and calmly explained the poor results were down to their own network, not ours. He showed me the speed difference, it was staggering. Travel Care had moved the site over the weekend and the speed difference alone had begun to decimate their business.

The site never recovered and it lost momentum and credibility with search engines and customers. It dropped out of the Alexa.com top 1000 to become a shadow of its former self at an embarrassing 1,799,379th place when I looked a few minutes ago.

So why is Google bothered by this? Surely Google is just interested in land grab and their PPC model. Absolutely not!

If you understand Google’s model and what motivates the Google team, you will understand and unlock the key to true online success.

Just like Bill Gates said, “how do we become the intelligence that runs all the computers in the world?” when he founded Microsoft, the young men in Google have similar aspirations.

“How do we become the definitive doorway to the internet?

When you ask a great question like that, you start to look for great answers. In this quest for the answer, Google realised that they need to provide the very best search results and the absolute best customer experience.

Google analysed their customers and their user experience and found that the most important factor was not the number of links on a page, or the meta information, or one of the countless SEO rules we hear about, but the speed. The speed determined whether or not customers got bored waiting for sites to load.

We have all done it haven’t we, where you click back because of a tiny delay? Well guess what, they are measuring that and in our opinion, they have been for some time.

So during the discussion I had about search engine optimisation, I was challenged to provide evidence of Google’s stance.

Firstly, Google posts on their own site that landing page quality and Quality Score will be negatively affected if a keyword is graded ‘This page loads slowly’. The full details are presented by Google on the Adwords page below.

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=87144

I have also enclosed a UKFast pdf which summarises the Google stance. I am specifically referring to item 4 on the ‘Google load time advice’ PDF:

http://pdf.ukfast.net/google_load_time_advice.pdf

Secondly Google advises website owners to contact their hosting provider if they are experiencing slow load time.

http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=93116

My third and final point is more emotive. Google like any corporate body take their revenues very seriously. Yet they are prepared to sacrifice some of this for fast sites with good quality scores. Why is this?

It is safe to assume that as they take speed seriously in the PPC model, they also view speed as equally important with their non paid for search.

Remember this, Google does not publish a list of what to do, like the top 100 things to make your site go up the search engines. SEO experts have simply deduced their findings from things that have happened to their sites. (Increases and decreases in traffic directly linked to recent changes they have made.)

The problem with this method of research is that they are comparing these to their own sites that they manage and not the Internet as a whole. How can this be accurate? They are not able to analyse all their changes in relation to the changes all other website owners are making. This would take an impossible coordinated effort.

However, at UKFast we are taking an active role in trying to speed up commerce and at the same time understand the search engines and what makes customers choose and leave sites. We have spent almost a decade with an R&D team always around 20% of our workforce splitting the Google atom.

With hundreds of thousands of domain names on our network and clever pieces of kit like our CISCO GUARD anomaly detector which funnily enough looks for anomalies and unusual spikes in traffic or our IDS and IPS which track and prevent unwanted intrusions, our unique CTM software (Capacity Threshold Monitoring) we are able to spot a change in a sites behaviour in an instant. Often it turns out to be a genuine increase in traffic. When this happens we all get excited, contact the site owner and put on our Google analysis hats.

Overwhelmingly the majority of increases in traffic to sites are directly linked to an increase in server or site speed. So a leaner web site on the same server is a great place to start.

Ironically if you look at a well SEO’d web site, they are text heavy with very little imagery. It is highly likely the leanness of the site is winning the great results. Imagine what is possible when you upgrade onto a faster network.

And this is where the fun begins.

I remember 7 or 8 years ago, sat at an ISPA event talking with some hosting company owners. Their businesses dwarfed UKFast at this point in time. They ridiculed the UKFast idea that speed was important. They thought I was missing a trick and they both proudly explained how they were maximing profit by reselling the same bandwidth (contending) over and over and over again. What frustrated me most was they were so pleased with themselves that their customers would never know!

And businesses are still doing it. Hosting companies who offer unlimited bandwidth or terabits of traffic can simply not be telling the truth if they promise an uncontended network. What happens when the internet users start to use the promised traffic.

Take the top hosting providers who make these large promises and you do the maths. If everyone of the 1000’s of businesses on their networks, all demanded the traffic promised in one month, in my opinion their networks would collapse. They probably would struggle if people require 25% of their allowance! It is a nice idea to be able to offer so much traffic, but it is simply not feasible because in the long run, as the internet grows, so does the need for bandwidth. Sadly, aggressive marketing often takes precedence over common sense.

The good news is, long before we knew that speed was fundamentally important, we realised that with a name like UKFast, we’d better live up to our name, and the result? UKFast customers are growing like wildfire.

So a decade on, although it is immensely rewarding to be larger and more profitable than the 2 businesses who scorned our honest approach to hosting and this is clearly one of those occasions where less is more, I have to attribute a lot of our success to good fortune and plain old fashioned luck that we find ourselves in this position now. Still fortune favours the brave and I am a big believer in karma, especially in business.

Finally if there are any SEO experts out there who still need convincing, just remember that your industry massive as it is, is built on supposition. If you are asked to name the top most important SEO ingredient I guarantee it will differ from expert to expert.

Speed is one ingredient which is easy to track. Try it, the results are awe inspiring.

It might sound easier to say than actually live by this philosophy, but its true, “there is no place for stress in any form in business life.”

Stress is not only bad for your health it is also bad for your business. It is a major distraction and the main reason why people do not achieve their full potential.

So how can you achieve zero stress in a fast paced and potentially stressful environment?

Before I launch into telling you how easy it is, I think it important for me to own up and tell you that in my first businesses I was always stressed by something. I would find myself being distracted from time to time on tax affairs, disputes over non payments and all the usual problems you get running and growing a small business. In my home life I was no better and I had resigned myself this was just a personality trait that I’d just have to live with.

I don’t think I could have mismanaged my time more effectively!

A turning point came after my accountant gave me a frank talking to and asked me “when was the last time you took a holiday Lawrence?”

I proudly said “9 years ago!” He looked at me shaking his head and said, “well you need to take a break and go and see how the other half are living!”

When I realised how stupid I’d been I was able to see that he was right of course. We all need space from time to time, space to breathe and recover. Time to ourselves is a must. I often talk of passion, but all the passion in the world misplaced without common sense is wasted energy. It’s funny how you become wiser with age!

But it is not the ‘time out’ itself that is the real key. We all know you can take time out from work yet be consumed by all the negative thoughts that follow you home.

There is a secret to it. This technique is so effective, it saved my life when I was trapped helpless underground dying and I have spent the rest of my life since trying to understand the phenomenon, develop it and share with others.

I later found a chap called Tony Robbins who used and taught a similar technique to hundreds of thousands of people. He is a life coach, someone who helps get you back on track or working to your full potential.

Ordinarily I am not a person interested in a listening to someone preaching about a new way of living your life. However when you hear the list of people Tony Robbins has helped lift to the highest level, you cannot help but be impressed. Ever heard of Andre Agassi, Michael Jordan? Or politicians such as Clinton or Gorbochov? The list is a modern day who’s who of living legends.

What I liked about Robbins, is that he openly admits not coming up with these ideas. Robbins is a brilliant orator and motivator. He has studied what makes people function to the best of their abilities in every walk of life. He has traced the originators back through time as far as he can and translates the methods into easily digestible chunks we can all understand.

For example, he wanted to find who was the fastest or fittest person on the planet. Eventually all the roads pointed to a tribe of Indians who run for fun 60 miles in the hot sun. During his study, he found that these Indians used a form of meditation and unusual breathing patterns before they exercise that almost leaves you trance like seeing clearer and completely focused. The first time I used this particular technique, I was on a cycling machine in a gym in Spain. The gym was empty and I put a towel over my head to help me concentrate. I listened for an hour with Tony Robbins in my earphones whist I cycled like a maniac. The only thing was, I had not cycled properly since I was a kid, and I certainly wasn’t exercising enough at this time in my life. When I stopped, after the hour long CD had finished, I lifted the towel from my head to find 3 people peering at me from down a corridor. They looked perplexed. I was suddenly embarrassed; my cycling machine was on the other side of the room pressed against a wall. Apart from the 30 km or so I had cycled, I’d also rocked the machine 50 feet across the gym.

As I got off the machine and proudly walked down the corridor, I bid the 3 people good afternoon and left. They were probably thinking how did that guy carrying all that extra weight do that? I know I was! The strangest thing the next day I wasn’t even stiff.The point of this particular part of the story is that all the techniques involving ultimate performance in some way or other use the mind.

I learned many things from Robbins and his CD’s, books, and I even went on to meet him in person. Most importantly I learned true success is already in you waiting to burst out. He simply uses a series of techniques that help you discover harness and help you find yourself. You can use these techniques in a variety of places; sport, competition, teaching, getting over phobias, breaking negative trends and associations.

The most effective and easiest of techniques that Robbins teaches and that I realised I used the day I almost died, is best described as an “Emotions trick”.

The simple fact is we can only feel one emotion at a time.

Happy, sad, exhilarated, stressed, grateful.Try it. Think about it, you can only feel one at a time. You can’t be happy and sad. You can’t be sad and amused, or stressed and happy.

So here is the trick. If you are stressed, afraid or want to stop feeling negative in any way, simply choose another emotion.

Now I can imagine you are already challenging me thinking if I am feeling desperately unhappy how do I suddenly condition myself to feel happy. “If I could do that” I hear you say, “there would be no problem!” You are right, but there is one emotion you can muster from anywhere, and that is feeling of being “grateful”.

This is one emotion we can all summon on tap. No matter how bad things become, there is always a worse place or someone less fortunate. This is a source of being grateful. If you replace whatever anxiety or suffering with “thank you God for this opportunity” or “for the air I breath.” This is one I use after being in an avalanche. Believe me no matter how bad things get I only have to think of this or moments I share with my kids and I replace the negativity in a flash.

Try it and practice it. The power of the mind is awesome. The more I discover the more I realise just how amazing our brains really are. I am confident if you use this technique your life will improve, as you will spend less time in a negative place and therefore more time being positive.

Buried under 10 ft of snow, cemented in with no air to breath I realised this was the end. Instead of getting stressed, I said “thank you”.I said thank you for a wonderful varied life, thank you for the experiences, but most of all I said thank you to everyone I had been lucky enough to share time with and learn from.

This simple act of being grateful, I am confident, saved my life. Above ground one of my friends, a doctor, luckily enough, who actually resuscitated me, was actually consoling a life long friend. He said to Dan, “he wont survive this length of time.”

I not only defied the laws of nature after they brought me back to life I stood up, (with help) and walked with a friend on either shoulder to the rescue helicopter. I remember seeing Stefan, our guide and lead rescuer, lighting cigarette, taking in a drag and saying in his unmistakable French accent, “there goes one tough son of a gun.”

But it wasn’t toughness, it was strength of mind. It was a second chance given to me for not squandering the last 8 minutes of my life in panic, even if I was entombed in a dark and lonely place. I wasn’t going to be carried to the helicopter, I was going to savor every step no matter how hard.

So when things get harder now, I go back to that dark place where I listed my friends and family, and I say “thank you.”I am on this earth to make a difference and no one is going to stress me out.

After surviving an event like that. I started asking lots of questions, “why?” was a reoccurring question: A little like my two a half year old who asks this question over and over again!

I wanted to find out who else used positive thinking to overcome difficult situations, and in the true spirit of positive thinking, I started bumping in to other positive people. I not only found and met Tony Robbins I ended up befriending one of his close colleagues and fellow workers, Suzie Mitchell who now is on our board of directors.It’s a funny old world.

So if you want to accelerate your success and avoid getting stressed, try this simple technique. You will be amazed at the outcome. You will be amazed at what you can achieve when you spend your life being positive, being grateful.

Maybe it is because I have never been to university. Maybe it is because I have no formal qualifications? I don’t know, but I seem to have a desire for continual learning. A search for what drives all things, past and present.

You can learn a great deal from the results of everyday life. If you can learn from your mistakes in time you will get to your chosen destination. If you can learn from your successes you will arrive a whole lot quicker.

One of the things that puzzled me and still does to a degree is “what makes UKFast more successful when my previous businesses didn’t come close?”

It is the same person at the helm, older and hopefully a little wiser, but essentially the same. It had no more money, in fact it probably had less. I put in longer hours with my first businesses.

I think one of the differences is, now we are growing a business as opposed to a set of products. UKFast is the focus as opposed to making money. It is treated like a living breathing entity. You are probably thinking “now he has really lost it!”

Certainly any accountants out there are reeling in agony at my naivety. “Just make money fool” I can hear them say. Yes they could run this business more profitably and find ways of cutting cost and speeding up production, but at what cost?

In time, if I am correct, and UKFast is nurtured properly, money will be a by-product of happy customers and a happy team.

But what about the product? What we sell? Well that changes both with time and careful consideration. When we first started UKFast we sold all sorts to make ends meet. It was this method that helped us find our feet and then direction.

I remember coming in to the office and saying “Gail, find me someone who can build and network computers; and pronto!” I had just sold some computers to Avis Car Rental across the corridor.

At that time we were focussed on selling reseller space and domain registrations, but that job set us on a search that would change our lives and eventually lead us to Neil. The great Neil Lathwood, now IT Director and a whole lot more. It was no simple journey either, and Neil, Gail and I would still probably argue we are still trying to find ourselves a decade later!

So what about the product? (You can read that in two ways.) That eventually found its rightful place, but with the nature of our industry it is almost as alive as we are. It evolves daily and has it’s own team of landscape gardeners in the shape of an R & D team.

So what is my advice? Well if you are destined to be in business and you are daft enough to want to work for yourself, then don’t procrastinate. Forget university, Get an office and start choosing the team. As Jim Collins says, get the right people and put them in the right seats. Then when you have great people around you, the product will show itself.

It is crazy to think UKFast was born from frustration when, one after another, each hosting provider let us down. I sometime question my own sanity. What sort of man dedicates his life to providing a service, just because he felt the people in the industry were not doing it right?

But that was the opportunity. It wasn’t about money, in spite of some pretty big ambitions. It was as much about honour and delivering on a promise. When you charge someone for a product or service, you should deliver. Not in part, but in full. And if you really want to be great, you should over deliver and excel. This is truly where the real excitement lies.

The hosting industry was very underdeveloped and driven mainly by technical people. The ones we came across did not feel the need for touchy feely customer service or in some cases, any customer service.

After an eternity in the incubation egg stage, one day, unannounced we were suddenly there, frustrating competitors who previously had not acknowledged our existence. Even more impressive is that we now hold centre stage in our competitor’s offices with posters about us for all to see. They have even doubled commission for any of their sales staff who can win business against us.

I suppose this should stress me out, but to the contrary it is flattering and an honour to be part of their interior design scheme. Increasing bonuses may win the odd battle but the truth of the matter is they just stopped competing/evolving.

Their company grew so large, so quickly, without competition, they began believing their own hype. Their desire to be the biggest and out-market the rest of the industry actually lead them from dry fertile ground in to treacherous swampland.

They were offering huge amounts of bandwidth with their solutions, with the knowledge at the time that “no one could possibly ever consume that much bandwidth.” It became a double-edged sword.

I remember our first full rack, housing 40 servers in Telehouse. The combined traffic of all the machines and thousands of domain names was less than 50 Gb’s in traffic. These days website use this much just for stats and back up. Suddenly the desire for bandwidth exploded and they had to make good on their promise and their network ground to a near halt. To date, I still don’t think they realise the extent of the problem.

We have servers on their network, which we use to analyse their performance and sure enough, as the day progresses and the internet wakes up, they slow down.

We have known for a number of years that a faster network is the most important ingredient to a successful online campaign. It is not about the specification of the server. The fastest machine on the planet plugged into an over-contended network will run incredibly slow. We have basic low end machines that out perform massive servers on some competitors networks. As Neil Lathwood, IT Director puts is, “A website or database can only run as fast as their slowest component.” The rest is just marketing flannel.

There are other issues too. They have replaced maverick entrepreneurial characters with less dynamic ones, but most of all, their service stopped evolving. Where they talked about value, they now slash prices. Somewhere they stopped believing.

It is a lesson to us all, never become complacent. For me this is the beginning. We are just hatching, our product is evolving and although we believe our product to be light years ahead of theirs, we are by no means the finished article. Where they copy specifications and marketing initiatives, they cannot copy people and passion.

You can argue that this is just a natural evolutionary stage common in the business world. First to market usually ends in disaster or mediocrity. (I will come back to this as this is a chapter in itself.)

So whilst competitors wield their sword I am reminded that the pen is mightier.
So for us, it is back to the drawing board, where we first started, and our quest for the Holy Grail of businesses continues.

So what is the lesson for this journey? Remain focussed, driven and passionate. Do not be scared of something just because it is bigger than you. Stand tall, fight with dignity and pride and remember your core values. The rest will be history, one day.

If you have experiences to share or questions to ask, I’d love to help. Please feel free to contact me. Lawrence DOT Jones@ukfast.co.uk

It may look as though UKFast sprang out of nowhere suddenly winning awards and accreditations for a wide variety of things however what we are now experiencing is nothing new. Countless businesses before us go through the exact same process.

We have for a decade (in September) been slogging away with the rest of the world oblivious to our presence. This is typical in the business world, and the best analogy of this comes from Jim Collins the author of the best selling business books “Good to Great” and “Built to Last”. He describes this common scenario in businesses by describing his “chicken and egg concept.”

“Imagine an egg” he describes, “sat there doing nothing. Totally uninteresting to the outside world, yet inside there is plenty going on. One day, the egg hatches and out pops a chicken. Suddenly everyone is amazed and shocked at the new discovery. Although the egg has been sat there for a very long time incubating, until the day it hatches, no real interest is shown in it.

It is very easy to run a small business and think that you are getting nowhere. Whist your competitors fly past with VC (Venture Capital) backing and lavish their shiny brands in your faces in the best of the trade magazines. But you must not get disheartened. Easier said than done, now we have a business which appears to be moving on from the ugly duckling stage!

But it hasn’t always been that way. I have had many businesses and even more daft ideas! Although each one has made money and I even sold one to Granada in my 20’s, I never stuck it out to the hatching stage.

There is a danger these days with the DOT COM bubble and conceptual businesses which attracted interest, one thing still remains firm from that time, the ridiculous question of “when is your exit point?”

To me this cheapens your business and all the hard work you and your colleagues put in to nurture and build something special. I have been scorned at by some pretty large entrepreneurs for not having a set exit date or amount of money we will sell for. I hate the word exit anyway. An exit is place you look for when the building is on fire or when you have to leave somewhere in a hurry. I get equally blank faces when confronted with the same question from accountants, lawyers and the like. What is wrong with wanting to build something solid, with longevity? A family business or a small business where you don’t feel you want to set the world on fire.

I believe these make the best businesses. UKFast was conceptualised in a garden, one summer. I had no idea what I wanted to do. I knew the internet was going to be massive as I had spent a year on and off in America and the whole of the US was obsessed by it. The only thing I was sure of was that my new girlfriend Gail Everton would make a great person to have on the team.

Years later I found out from reading Good to Great that this process was a tried and tested method for launching a successful business. Collins talks of getting the right people on the bus and the wrong ones off, then when you are confident you have the right team, find your product. It seems a backwards way of doing things, but ironically now I look back this is what we did. It was just a very small bus, or may be a tandem! The first 4 people (myself included) that sat in the Ducie House surrounded by a plethora of other tiny businesses all with similar dreams and aspirations, are still with UKFast , 9 and a half years later.

It took us the best part of a week to find out what we were going to be doing, and ironically it wasn’t through sophisticated analysis or market research, it was because we tried to register and host a completely different business called thegallery.com. The irony was that the company we tried to do this through was appalling and so we tried another, then another, then another and so it went on until I turned to Gail and said the opportunity is not in the website idea thegallery.com, it was in the hosting of websites for other people.

Daft as a brush, and with out realising the might of the organisations around us, without the technical expertise at that time in house, without sufficient finances to pursue such a dream we set about finding a name.

All this because we were frustrated with the shocking attitudes of these new businesses that were growing by default, because their industry was exploding.

I didn’t care whether or not we made money, I knew there was a hole to fill in the market and part of my destiny was to fill it. A decade later we still fill the gap. Yes, we have had to evolve our product and service and our ability as managers and business professionals, but our core values are still the same as the first day we set up. We still have the same attitude. It is this attitude you need if you want to be truly successful. It is something we all experience in our lives, be it as a child, at school, or on the sports field. It is something easily watered down, forgotten or drowned by mediocrity if not nurtured and rewarded. But it is in all of us, it is why we evolve, it is why we were put on this planet.

You have to believe that you are going to be the best at whatever you do. If you are not going to be, you may as well shut up shop and look to do something else. Yes you may fail, time and time again, but as long as the attitude is there you will eventually succeed.

Companies who go against these giant industry leaders do so knowing that deep down their service is better, their staff around them are better or their product maybe better. After years of diligence in the incubating pre-chicken stage eventually they emerge with an amazing business. All it takes is belief, resilience and perseverance.

So if you are in the incubating stage, don’t give up. Don’t let anyone knock you off your path, or make you feel your product or business is worth less because you do not turnover millions. It is highly likely that you will succeed. It is also likely during tough times like today’s economic environment that you as a small business have a major competitive advantage over your largest competitors. They will be in a position where they are having to hit numbers to impress share holders and stock market analysts.

Remember there are still customers out there you just have to fight harder to win and keep them. Work hard and when the recession lifts you will emerge a fitter, stronger organisation and if you have not already hatched, you will be ready.

Sounds great? Yes, but what happens when the market changes, or the scheme unravels and it doesn’t financially stack up.
BA (British Airways) recently announced an expiration date on their Airmiles. A caveat put in place to protect the business, which ended up having an adverse effect, putting more strain on the airline. What was designed to delete a few points and calm the scheme down actually encouraged everyone to use them before they were taken from them. BA therefore ended up scheduling more free flights than usual at a time they were attempting to drive more revenue and save costs.
Who remembers Hoover, with their absurd flights to America promotion? A genius idea or a shocker? Personally I believe the latter. To give away something that is high value: high cost when selling a low cost product is an act of lunacy. In fact this was suicide and Hoover never recovered. Next to Dyson, Hoover is a poor relation, yet ironically you will get the Dyson out and ask your husband or wife to “give the lounge a Hoover.” What a marketing tragedy when something so great dies.

Another great brand that springs to mind, is Hilton Hotels. They have an island in the Maldives called Conrad Rangali, or previously known as Hilton Rangali where I have stayed for in excess of 20 weeks in the last 8 years. They have a loyalty scheme that I first have to question the name of. Hilton Honours. There is nothing “honourable” about this scheme, it would be better named “Hilton Honours Nothing!” In fact it actually penalises the best customers.

Last year when checking out we found they had capped the number of points you could collect in one visit, the most one could receive was 100,000 points. At 10 points per dollar, someone spending $10,000 would receive the same amount as someone spending $100,000. When you have just flown your in-laws and parents over to join you for your 3 week vacation, this is not the time you want to be told of a new technicality they have introduced. I was reassured by the reservations manager that next year they would see to it we were doubly impressed and to make amends for some pretty major hiccups he promised to upgrade us by way of an apology.

Inspite of the cap I had around 600,000 points. This year with the high dollar price, we thought it prudent to cash in some of our points. It seemed simple enough. Book 2 weeks using the points and 1 week extra using cash as there is a limit to the number of points you can cash in at one time. This I understand and I think is totally reasonable.

My wife and I were also pleased because as Diamond VIP Hilton Honours members we were being upgraded to our favourite room. Free of charge. Now at this point we do feel special. Proud to be part of the Diamond VIP tribe. Especially as the room we stay in is a beautiful water villa we first stayed in 8 years ago on our Honey Moon and anniversary of my avalanche accident.

We rang a few days later to double check everything was ready only to find they had down graded us. The new reservations manager, aptly titled “Revenue Manager” (clearly revenue is more important than honour!) told my wife to read the terms and conditions at the bottom of an email confirming our stay, written in small print. It said something along the lines of; “we do not honour the automatic upgrade you usually get when booking as a Hilton Honours member at the Conrad Rangali Maldives Hotel.”
Worse they had not even booked our special room for the week we were paying and my wife was told that all these types of rooms were now fully booked.
With a distraught wife, I attempted to contact the hotel. It took 37 times before Boris Blobel the new revenue manager finally took my call. He said “do you have anything in writing?” he put me on hold (or thought he did and I heard him slate me to his colleagues) before coming back to me saying that unless we had proof of the conversation, there was nothing he could do.

I contacted the General Manager Carsten Schieck, he refused to take my calls and eventually emailed me saying, if you can prove we were promised the upgrade they would look into it. They clearly doubted what I was saying, that we were indeed promised an upgrade. Even though their notes on their system stated please upgrade to room 345.

Now for most people that would be the end of the matter. We, on the other hand, record all conversations for training purposes, but also because people have a habit of reneging on promises.
Before I had even got into work my PA who had picked up and responded to Carsten Schieck’s email had summoned the IT director, retrieved the recording and sent it back to Carsten Schieck on my behalf. Knowing how upset my wife had been over the whole affair she was confident they would quickly see the light and apologise.

So now we had established that we were expecting room 345, a free upgrade for 2 of the 3 weeks. We had also proven it by sending a copy of the conversation where the Hilton representative had stated clearly that there would be no extra charge. They had even implied they would honour it now that we had gone to such great lengths to demonstrate just how much we had been put out!

Yet despite all that, Carsten Schieck emailed, yes, no phone call, to say “if you want to cancel you can do otherwise it is full price and either way the room you want is not available now.”

We would have at this point cancelled except now we had builders in at home and Hilton were not about to reimburse our flights if they wouldn’t honour a simple upgrade.

So here I sit, on a beautiful island blessed with beautiful weather, labelled as part of a tribe whose values are clearly not aligned with ours. In truth I have nothing in common with this brand whatsoever.

I spoke with a Conrad senior press official as reception were screening all calls to the management regarding this issue. Oshy Phillips, who I have to say was lovely, promised to help rectify the situation. She knew Carsten Schieck personally, she said she would get things sorted. She came back with her tail between her legs, obviously powerless to intervene.

So when you are designing your loyalty scheme make sure it is less a “scheme” and it stands aligned with your brand values. Don’t promise something you can’t honour. Don’t name it something that sounds too fantastic that is almost impossible to live up to. Make it uniform for all, uncomplicated and transparent. Don’t penalise great customers who have spent huge amounts of money utilising your products or services. These are the ones that need rewarding.

Most of all, if you make a mistake, stand up and take it on the chin. Don’t spit in the face the very people who have lived and breathed your brand for years, tirelessly promoting your brand values to their friends and family. It might just come back and bite you.

By the way Carsten, please can you get the door handle fixed on the toilet entrance at the Vilu Restaurant.

Thanks.