We even had Clem Curtis and the Foundations as the band and the entire squad of Sale Sharks players, girlfriends and wives came too. Clem celebrated his 69th birthday that day and still rocked the house like he did back in the 70′s.

This years annual party is even bigger. To celebrate an amazing first half of the year and for just being in business together, we are having UKFest. Yes that is UKFest and not a typo. It stands for UKFestival. We are throwing a weekend festival for friends and family of UKFast down in Wales on the Castell Cidwm estate, and if I can convince the farmer behind to borrow his field, we can squeeze in some extra tents and portaloos and invite even more guests.

But its not just parties and nights out. Your team mates need constant training, their environment needs to be just right. People are sensitive. Quite often, new starters bring with them associations of what businesses are really like. It’s their first hand experience from a previous job and they have the association firmly set in their mind that management equals pain and inconsistency and all businesses are the same.

Sometimes you can never break that association and people go through their lives really not enjoying their job.

We are currently in the process of kitting out our office with a huge amount of greenery. It is partly to celebrate the start of a brand new business venture with a friend of mine who has been in the world of trees and horticulture for 17 years with his lovely wife Clair. It’s also a great excuse for me to have fun and reinforce that by creating a fun environment.

So once you’ve created the Best Place To Work, what then?

I am a great believer in working with people to get them to be their happiest they can possibly be. But you know what, sometimes you just cant please everyone. If you have an individual who doesn’t quite get your core values and what you really stand for, they will probably work against you. Not necessarilly deliberately, but nevertheless, by them not “buying into” your culture and philosophies, they can cause a huge amount of damage. If that person is in a senior position, you have even more trouble.

I read a book called The Extra Mile that focusses on alignment and engagement. The 2 buzz words of corporate HR.

Objective number one is go get everyone aligned with your way of thinking, then get the most engaged people into positions of seniority (as long as they fit the mould) and then work towards getting every individual engaged.

Easier said than done and it is an ongoing quest when you have hundreds of staff. But it is possible. UKFast is living proof of it and although we are more a work in progress than the finished article, we are having fun learning about each other in the process.

The same book states clearly that if you have a manager or someone in a senior position who is either disengaged, or engaged but not aligned, you are in for a rocky ride, but there’s enough to discuss on that topic to warrant a dedicated blog.

I love puzzles. Getting your team right is the ultimate puzzle. It is like doing the rubiks cube in the dark!

So do people really understand the importance of alignment and engagement? I think not. It amazes me how many office environments I see or hear about that are simply not places I’d want to work. And working from an industrial unit is not an excuse either. I went to see James Timpson’s offices in Wythenshaw. Apart from the fact James was building a swimming pool off the staff canteen area, everything about his office was simply a “Wow!” And that being said, I don’t think you could find a managing director who places people and their well being higher on the agenda. James is a credit to British business and an example to other business men and women who want to build something extraordinary. He not only followed in his father’s footsteps, he strode on ahead and paved the way for a new era of “upside down management.”

And so after my FD at UKFast put it so succinctly. “We have colourful staff, but the office is a bit grey” I thought it time to take our “fun initiative” to a new level and start living some of our values! You can always do more, and if you ask yourself that question, can I do more at every stage, you will normally get better results.

So does it pay to invest in your staff? Absolutely! Invest in the workspace, training in every aspect of people and career development. I am just beginning to see the fruits of our labour, and it is worth while. It is difficult to quantify human emotion, we all understand monetary values, but when it comes to effort and passion, we don’t have a scale to measure it. As a result, I think it falls by the wayside in order of importance in 21st century business.

With regards to the office environment, when people ask “what is the rationale behind such a beautiful office?” I simply  say, “when I come to work I want to feel a million dollars. I want my team to feel te same.”

If you have any comments or ideas on how we can continue to develop at UKFast, I’d be very glad to hear from you.

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.

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 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.

He is a worthy winner and the rapturous response he received when his name was announced reaffirms that he is a great entrepreneur and has the popular vote amongst the business community.

UKFast was a sponsor of the awards this year and I have to say I was pleased with the result. It is difficult to find another organisation that has done as much for Manchester as Bruntwood.

There are many awards nowadays and some people think that the sentiment behind the ceremony has been diluted. But personally I like to view them very positively.

I am honoured to have won a couple of awards. Most recently in 2007 I was happy to receive the IOD’s Young Director of the Year title. Plus this year, my company, UKFast, has won its fourth Best Hosting award in as many years at the ISPAs.

I’m currently a finalist for the Ernst & Young award, something I’m incredibly happy to have been nominated for.

But in a world where you can blindly beaver away for years, often the only reminder of your success comes from painfully increasing tax demands. I believe that to achieve an award is not just a pat on your back from your peers, but a reinforcement that you are doing something right.