It was a creative place for me and whilst it was mid holidays and the majority of students were on vacation, I really got a sense that I was in a special place. I had a great summer and made some lifelong friends and although I considered moving there, I was fundamentally a musician and back then, wild horses would have not dragged me from my vocation.

I never realised just how important Palo Alto was going to be in the technical revolution that followed. With Stanford University on its doorstep too, the area is steeped in history in the same way people look upon Manchester as a central point for the Industrial Revolution, Palo Alto and Silicon Valley have to carry similar weight.

Since then we’ve seen meteoric rises from a number of the worlds largest technical giants, Apple, Cisco, eBay, Google, who house their head offices there.

One of the most recent of the dominant players is Facebook who moved to Palo Alto in 2003. They have had an interesting rise to fame and good fortune, although the fortune is a little more recent.

With traffic volumes exceeding Google, Facebook has more than 830 million users, and as a result has to be the world’s most high profile website.

In recent years it has entered everyones homes and hearts, linking families, businesses, long lost relatives, school mates, it has done the impossible. It is doing the unimaginable. It crosses borders as easily as water and it knows no boundaries. There is no culture that has rejected it. It works in every language. Fundamentally it feeds the needs of all humans, whatever creed or continent.

The billion dollar question is how far can it go?

There is no point trying to work out how Mark Zuckerberg created such a masterpiece as I doubt he really knows. There was evidently a gap in our social lives that none of us knew about and Facebook filled it. What Zuckerberg has done extraordinarily well is exploit that gap and give us exactly what was needed.

So with talks of the Facebook IPO, is it worth the $100 billion that they are hoping to raise? It sounds like a lot of money and with economies all over the world facing tougher times around the corner, it seems crazy that a website that allows us to communicate with each other can be worth so much.

Yet, if you put it into perspective, $100 billion is only 27 times the annual revenue of $3.71billion, when Apple went public in 1980 it was valued at $1.19 billion 25 times its earnings. It is moderate in comparison to Googles who went for 218 times earning back in 2004. Yet Google delivered and in the last 8 years changed the face of advertising. Facebook would have to be the world’s first $700 billion dollar company to replicate Google’s rise.

When you consider Facebook grew 88% last year, it is a tempting gamble, yet a great many brokers are warning against investing in the rising giant. Personally I can see it going for a great deal more than 27 times even though the market currently dictates around 12 times. There is an emotional attachment that people have with the site and that sometimes carries a great deal of weight, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the initial entering is particularly high.

If you scrape away all the hype though and compare it to Apple who grew its profit 85% to $25.92 billion, Apple trades at a modest 13 times its price to earnings.

If you apply the Facebook multiple, UKFast would be valued at almost $1.0 billion.  ($939 million to be exact.)

Maybe I should have stayed in Palo Alto after all, especially when you apply the Google multiple, UKFast would be worth $7.5838 billion. Now even my wife couldn’t spend that much.

Whatever the outcome, you have to hand it to Zuckerberg, he’s done well. And inspite of a great many people all professing to have either come up with the idea or influenced it, he has hung on to the lions share getting credible people in around him who have track records in designing large scale corporates, enabling him to remain creative.

This is the thing I admire the most in any business. Its the first thing that suffers usually. Demands on the entrepreneur dictate new pressures and larger responsibilities as businesses sky rocket, so much so they often suck out the life and fun of most founders. Yet in spite of this and some pretty stupid gaffs, Zuckerberg enters the Silicon Valley Hall of Fame as one of the youngest internet billionaires.

On the subject of gaffs Zuckerberg paid David Chloe a graffiti artist who decorated a wall of his first office in Palo Alto offering him shares instead of a few thousand dollars. Those shares are now worth an estimated $200,000,000.

Ironically, the fee for the picture David Chloe painted is more than the cost of the building that they left. I am not sure I’d want to paper over that mistake.

So as Facebook move to Menlo Park Campus to their new HQ, I cant help thinking of the neglected piano. I do hope with all that money sloshing around someone takes the trouble to give her a tune and a tinkle every now and again.

We have our work cut for us if we want to keep up this momentum though as it is technically harder to increase percentage growth year on year whilst growing organically. Its the first thing analysts question, “how do you intend on maintaining this trajectory?” The simple answer is, you don’t, unless each year you increase every area in identical proportion to your turnover. Its very difficult to achieve this organically as with growth comes cash flow difficulties and a plethora of challenges. Also in an economy such as ours, I believe its more prudent to follow common sense, build at the speed that you feel most comfortable at.

That being said, we are on a massive recruitment drive, although I am not sure where we are going to house everyone yet as we are bursting not just with energy on the 28th floor but at the seams too.

But under the skin of UKFast we are having fun and thats important. Breaking down our larger goals into a myriad of challenges for smaller teams to tackle is the new game. I would be kidding myself if I thought I can influence every team member as well as the direct line managers can, who work directly for and on behalf of their team mates. My job is to motivate the managers and trust they are able to pass on the message with passion and without dilution.

Its part of the process of learning to manage a much larger business. Its sad in a lot of respects as I have thoroughly enjoyed the responsibilities of leading from the front and battling with my mates who all of whom I’d swim the channel for and them in return, (with the possible exception of Rich, who’s not a great swimmer!) Over the last 12 years a great many of them have become close friends and I love being a part of their growth outside of work too as they settle down and start having kids. But its time for these friends of mine to wear my shoes and develop new skills of their own managing and developing their teams.

If I look at this pragmatically, there are similarities to the old days when there was just 20 or so of us. If you total up all our managers and team leaders we are in a similar place. The only difference is that unless I want to continue to slow down the growth of UKFast, I have to let nature take its course. I can’t be sat next to every person coaching them individually!

So have I officially stepped back? I have done so before at my peril and watched managers with pedigrees and so called proven track records steer us off course. On previous occasions I have had to step back in to pick up the pieces. Its costly when you get it wrong, you not only slow down growth, you also lose great people who get disheartened in the process.

Yet this time I am confident we have the right people in place and whilst I don’t think any of us are the finished article yet, their appetite makes them the right people for the job. I have spent a number of years preparing for  this and working tirelessly on the culture of the business ensuring I invest all my time and energy in the right people.

It comes at an interesting time to as my own family is growing too. My wife Gail gave birth to our newest baby last Friday at 2.26am. Not many people can work with their spouse yet we have had an incredible innings and I have enjoyed working with her and building this great organisation together. So in a funny way I know I have lost her too at this crucial time. Mind you don’t for a minute underestimate my wife. At ten minutes past midnight I was reminding Gail that I had a sales meeting starting in just over 7 hours. And whilst I was slightly late for the meeting and a little shell shocked and emotional on arrival, my wife too arrived at work carrying our baby less than 9 hours after giving birth. If you thought Thatcher was tough, you have no idea. Its this sort of commitment that makes UKFast special.

So whilst Gail is doing her mum stuff, you can rest assured, that I wont be allowed to and she will continue to motivate and inspire me and the troops from a different angle. But this time is going to different for her too.

After the birth of our first daughter, she lay on a play mat whilst Gail (with support from June and Paula) entered every transaction of every customer into our new accounting system we’d designed and built. It took months. The impact of second daughter followed a similar suit as the business had grown to new levels with new extraordinary challenges that require endless hours of commitment. So this time I can say with certainty Gail’s officially on maternity leave and I am going to see to it that she enjoys every moment.

Luckily we have been planning this for some time and we have put in place a team that whilst they cant replace Gail they support me and my managers to the highest levels.

So it is undoubtedly the birth of a new era, a very interesting one. Wish us luck!

Best of British

Lawrence

Latest arrival to the growing team at UKFast

I find it fascinating that people can view the same thing from completely different perspectives and say with absolute certainty that they see total opposites.

You can look at a picture and see the most magical inspiration before your eyes, and yet someone else might not give it a second glance.

The same applies to everything we do and experience in our lives. What might inspire one person, just doesn’t make sense to another.

And so what drives this difference in opinions and views?

I heard a great analogy that the brain like a computer, is a processor, however, unlike a computer, it can only focus on one thing at a time. If you try it, you really can only give one thing, your full attention. And whilst you can perform functions that you have rehearsed over and over again, walking, cooking, exercising, when turning your attention to something important, you will struggle if you add something else to the mix.

Tony Robbins talks of only being able to feel one emotion at the same time and I totally agree with this concept too.

Understanding this philosophy, or restriction that we all have, actually helped me enormously. Previously when I have tried to tackle everything that needs sorting in my life, I of course became overwhelmed and very little got done. In fact, sometimes the list is so large that it is easier not to tackle anything and find something easier to fill your time.

We have a rule at UKFast, that we never show all our plans to people, when we only had 4 people in the business (sorry Rich and Neil) Gail and I would write enormous lists of everything that we needed and wanted to achieve. And whilst we got incredibly excited by this, our 2 new team members actually became demotivated by the sheer volume of what lay ahead of them.

Can you imagine walking or running across America? Or climbing Everest? Or rowing across the Atlantic in a tiny boat which my good friend Dan Innes did? The thought is almost too daunting, but if you cut it up into smaller journeys, States, weeks, days, hours, then break each one of those into separate challenges, everything is a lot easier to tackle.

So what did we do at UKFast? Well we wrote some software and whilst Gail and I could offload thousands of jobs and ideas, we’d only let a maximum of the next 4 tasks be visible to anyone in the team. A remarkable thing happened, productivity speeded up, the same 2 people became more engaged, not only tackled more but achieved the work of 5 people. Both Richard and Neil still work for UKFast, they have joined the 10 year club and both got a cheque for £10,000 for putting up with me for a decade!

More seriously though, I couldn’t do what I do without support from individuals like these guys. Yet if we’d not learnt this really important lesson, the same two people might be very different.

So in a world of a thousand decisions and with enormous pressures at every turn how do some people manage to remain positive. How come some people just seem to be luckier than others.

In a meeting the other day a friend pointed out a quote from Steve Redgrave’s book, everything they did prior to winning the Gold medal was benchmarked against the question, “will it make the boat go faster?”

I could have done with this clarity as a very small business person running MDC as my first 10 years in business were incredibly stressful. They were great fun too, but it was like a game of snakes and ladders. I’d go from strength to strength then hit a major issue usually in the form of cash flow.

I hadn’t had a day off or a holiday in nearly 10 years and my uncle Anthony (who was doing my accounts) told me I was busy going nowhere. He was right of course and although the advice hurt, I took the holidays I needed and suddenly I had new goals to focus my attention on. My boat started to go a little faster, I was just going in circles!

Going back to the brain being a single processor philosophy, I learnt early on in life that you can convince yourself that even when it was bitterly cold, if you said out loud with conviction, “I love this weather” pretty soon you’d be noticing the colours in the mist or rain and the biting wind just didn’t feel so bad. I applied this philosophy to many things, but it took a while for me to translate this skill into business and personal life. However it can be done and actually is done by thousands of business people and atheletes across the globe. You are probably doing it already in areas of your life without realising it.

If you focus on all the problems you may encounter whilst trying to hit your sales target or grow your business, you can guarantee you are going to make it significantly harder on yourself than if you focus of the end result of picking up the trophy or celebrating the success that may lie ahead.

Now some people may argue that you need to be realistic and you have to plan to avoid pitfalls, personally I believe this is procrastination and if we all did this, we’d not evolve as humans, we’d simply sit at home stressing about the next episode of Coronation Street.

If you feel cold, focus on something else and the cold will go away. If you feel sad, find something you can be grateful for and do your best to focus on that instead. Whatever you focus on you will feel.

Do you focus on the economy and should you? Well yes if you are an economist or the Prime Minister otherwise you should have enough on your plate. I remember one of the nuns at Brigedene Convent saying, “Lord grant me strength to change the things I can and the courage to accept the things I cant and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Now whether you are a religious person or not, this is great common sense. We are too wrapped up in the news because it is so accessible, it in front of us in our homes, in our ears in the car, it is the topic of conversation on everyones lips. Its boring and really if we didnt know any better you might be better off. Focus on what you can change and hope for the best that everyone else is as focussed as you on their roles.

I am not advocating ignoring warning signs and throwing caution to the wind with everything you do, I just mean don’t let it consume you like so many people seem to allow.

If you get the balance right, it should in theory give you more time to focus on the important things. Improving your own lives. Quality time with your friends and family. Its funny how it always seems to boil down to this.

He explained that happiness is something that comes from within. It depends entirely on your internal state and the lens that you look at life through. So if you’re unhappy, you will probably see the bad in everything. If you’re immensely positive and happy, then you’re bound to approach life with a spring in your step and see the good in everything.

Lets face it, there is good in everything and everyone. Sometimes you just have to look a little harder.

I have met many people who assume that money is the “be all and end all.” But money doesn’t bring happiness. People bring happiness; family and friends and the things you do with them. The more you give, listen and contribute, the happier you seem to be.

If you are missing in any of these areas, then these are the places to invest more time and energy. I am not the finished article by a long shot, but I am aware of where I need to spend more time, so there is hope for me yet!

I delivered a talk recently to my sales team and account managers, I was trying to get their attention and make them start the year off with their best foot forward. All too often people take too long to brush off the winter blues after Christmas and New Year’s excesses.

I asked them what makes people successful? And why are some people more successful than others? Whilst there are no hard and fast metrics to measure this principal, I have learnt that people who take their time more seriously than others inevitably cram in more to their days and eventually over a long period of time these small steps you are making now, mount up to be a big journey. I mentioned something similar in last week’s blog.

But to put it into perspective, I got people to focus on the end of that journey. What’s the final destination? And what will your last words be when you are on your deathbed?

It is a great question and as I have been there, I am able to help give an accurate depiction of what you are bound to say.

It was only 11 years ago, but I remember every second as though it were my last, probably because at the time they were.

Deep under the snow, I had the life squeezed out of me.

My last breaths were hard and fast. I remember the heat from my mouth as I suffocated and whilst all this was going on, my mind was busy at work.

And what goes through your head when you are alone underground cemented in an early grave, very much alive, even if it is only for a few more minutes?

I can tell you with certainty, when it’s your turn and sadly your turn will come, you wont be thinking of the money you have or haven’t made. You will be thinking of one thing; relationships.

It’s people and relationships that are the only things of value, nothing else matters.

I spent my last few minutes feeling massive regret and I can promise you I will never be in that position again. I will live trying and I will die trying.

There is nothing in my mind more important than this.

It’s difficult for me to explain to you just how valuable your last few minutes on the planet are. They mean everything, but I am not eloquent enough to put it into words. I do believe if you knew now what I have learnt, you might approach your life slightly differently.

The best way to try and explain the emotion is if you put yourself in a position where you find out you are never going to see someone you love dearly again, it is sprung on you, they are emigrating and you have one last day with them.

What do you do?

Well, I know what I’d do, I’d change whatever plans I had for that day and dedicate every last minute with that person making it as memorable and magical as possible.

However you look at this, the actual parting when they leave is going to hurt.

Imagine not having a full day, only having a few minutes to come to terms with the fact you are not going to see them again, only this time they aren’t there with you; you are alone. It’s fair to say this is much tougher.

This is bad enough, but when you imagine not just that one person, but every great person you’d ever had the pleasure to spend a minute with in your amazing life, a life that 5 minutes ago you took for granted.

And whilst they can’t hear your goodbyes, they can’t see your tears, you will crave their breath on your neck or the touch on your skin.

Take a minute and think about it. It puts a lot into perspective when you simplify everything to just raw emotion, trust me there is nothing more important in any of our lives.

The feeling I had that day is not a feeling I’d wish on anyone. It is far too extreme to have to deal on a daily basis, but occasionally I go there to reflect, usually around now! Each time I visit, I get a little more. There is more to discover, but it’s just too painful to immerse myself completely and I am not ready to completely share the whole experience just yet. One day maybe. The bit just below the surface, can only be described as an avalanche of emotion; quite ironic under the circumstances and the snow.

It’s an intense place and it’s a time that when it comes again I am ready for it and it’s not the cold dark, lonely place I remember all too vividly.

So, with that in mind, are you investing in your friends and family enough? I know I’m not. When was the last time you really showed someone how you feel? And even if that was 10 minutes ago, do you do it enough?

And when you tackle your day or week ahead, what if you were to get up a few hours earlier, to guarantee an extra few hours. Even if you did this 6 days a week, you’d give yourself an extra 624 hours, but of working hours, that’s like adding 78 days to your year.

So why lie in bed when you can start the day off in the gym or with a brisk walk in the fresh air and squeeze that extra little bit out of life.

Anyway, most importantly enjoy the week ahead and make a difference to your own life by making a difference to others.

Its a beautiful place and at the start of the Millennium it was a landmark moment that I am able to look back at. We were not well-off, we had very little and if I am honest, I was barely keeping up with my mortgage repayments, but we had our health and dreams to make a better life.

UKFast was only months old and we sat down in front of the log fire the next day and wrote out everything we had achieved in those first few months of business. The list didn’t comprise of very much, maybe 7 or 8 things, but it allowed us a small victory and gave us a sense of pride and a warm reminder that we were going in the right direction.  As a business person you get regular setbacks, so its easy to forget that you are making progress. This discipline makes the positive steps you are making, however small, stand out, just like footprints in the snow.

Our first list was a little sparse to say the least. We didn’t have any staff, we’d moved to a tiny 2 person office in the city, we can’t have had more than 4 or 5 customers, but it gave us a platform to start building in the New Year.

Its a discipline that we continue to follow as a tradition and each year the list gets a little longer. We list people, awards, accreditations, office moves, holidays, great moments,  literally any achievement however big or small. We do a business version and a home one too. It is something we now look forward to and its a great time to look back on all the events of the previous year and reflect.

In a world that races at 1,038 miles per hour (at its circumference) it often feels like we are going at the same speed. Its all too easy to forget to pause and look back on the journey, weigh up what went well and what could have gone better.

However successful you are, there are always areas in your life where you can improve.

Honesty is an important part of finding true success. You need people around you who can spot when you are going of track, but you also need to be honest with yourself too. It requires discipline, because more often than not, its easier to ignore problems as often the truth hurts. If you are listing the good you have to list the bad too.

It might be weight related, it may be your work life balance is out, you may be neglecting someone, you maybe neglecting yourself? Whatever it is, there has to be something you can improve. Deep down you probably know what it is, its often difficult to face up to, because if you do, you have to do something about it.

But we need the bad things too as they are important drivers to help give us things to aim at to improve. Without those annoying negative things we’d have no reason for growth and fundamentally, this is what life is all about.

So dont beat yourself up for all the bad things you might be doing, just use  them are leverage to make some serious improvements.

Besides what choice do we have, if you leave a problem, does it go away? Seldom, in my experience do problems just disappear they normally get bigger!

For the record I have a list as long as my arm of all the things I might have done better if I’d taken more care or been more disciplined. What I have found though is by writing down my New Years refection it helps me solidify what is needed for the journey ahead.

So before you do your goal setting this year and write down the list of everything you want to do and become, it might be worth considering sitting down with your partner, be they business or pleasure, or both like in my case, and list all the things you have done together and achieved.

I promise you its worth that warm fuzzy feeling and it gives you the momentum to take on 2012 and all the challenges you set yourself and those unexpected ones!

Don’t expect a miracle, success is built up of  small steps and lots of them, but years later those small steps may culminate to giant leaps or the pitter patter of tiny feet.

I wish you all the best and I hope to see you on your journey soon.

Best wishes for 2012 and beyond.

Lawrence Jones

The line up consisted of 3 politicians, myself and another business person. One of the big topics concentrated around university fees and whether or not the £9,000 is fair.

There seems to have been a massive cultural change over the last 10 or 15 years. Blair popularised the idea that everyone should go to University and whilst headline grabbing “right-on,” or “perfect world” scenario sounds great, it actually left the country in a bit of a pickle years later,  suddenly Great Britain was short of plumbers, electricians and other tradesmen.

No worries though we had a few million Lawyers coming through the system!

The way Tony Blair portrayed university made it such that if you didn’t go you were a second class citizen. Suddenly every parent in the country was busy competing with their next door neighbours and their family members to send all their children to Uni.

Is it any wonder so many families end up in debt. I was shocked to find out how expensive university is. This coupled with Student Loans are in my opinion big enough reasons NOT to go on to higher education, unless you are learning a specific trade for a particular vocation.

People forget, a university is a business. They generate money, pay salaries and report profits just like other businesses. But are our universities in danger of focussing too much on their own profits rather than the education they are providing?

There are other ways to learn, a university degree doesn’t give you an iron clad guarantee that you are going to be successful. Sir Gerald Kauffman the labour politician there mentioned a story of a girl who he’d known who’d gone on an apprentice scheme, ending up “carry a polythene bag walking up and down a train picking up rubbish.” Whether he meant to or not (and I am sure he did not) he spoke as if this person was a second class citizen as a result of her failing the scheme. Every job has merit and never underestimate a person by the clothes they wear or their vocation.

Its interesting when asked for a show of hands how many people wanted to go to university, everyone stretched for the ceiling but there was silence. I asked the question, what is it about University that you are looking forward to? Is it the freedom? Is it the fact that you get away from your parents and you have an abundance of parties?

Now I got a reaction. I got a unanimous resounding response.

Once I’d explained that you don’t have to go to University to have a blast. I had their attention. They had not considered this option.

I never went to university, I not only had my first 4 bedroom house at 19 years old, I also had an income greater than my mother who had been teaching for 20 years.

And all from just playing the piano and being resourceful.

I must have touched a nerve or said something that the kids related to because as  soon as we’d finished the 30 or so students all gathered round me to shake my hand.  It was an overwhelming moment as I realised that in amongst all the adversity and uncertainty, I somehow represented some sort of beacon of hope. I must have been the first bit of positivity they had seen in some time.

Talking with the kids, I could see passion tempered with an air of desperation of which way they should turn.

What sort of world are we creating for the next generation? We are so busy worrying about the now, the future is being overlooked.

John Moulton is the only one who put it in a simple enough way for me to understand. “For every £3 the government earns, it spends £4.”

It doesn’t matter if you hate the conservatives, the labour government set that ball rolling. And if you hate labour, there are a plethora of indiscretions the conservatives have made. Both parties are equal in their indifference and their desire to share the blame. The world is changing quicker than our political system can deal with.

Can you imagine a simple questionnaire going out, “Do we invade Iraq?”  and “Do we invade Syria?”

The people of Britain could answer that question very simply via the internet and there would be no need for the lies and time wasting debates that precede and follow.

This would have been an administrative impossibility a decade ago. Now it would be simple and you could have an answer back on a any question in hours.

Anyway its not going to happen. I can’t see politicians voting themselves out of the control they currently have. Something has to change though. The quality of the decisions being made and the management of the diminishing funds isn’t at a high enough level to propel us forward.

So it’s no wonder that the 6th formers are looking anxious.

What are the options?

Well whatever the economy, if you are wanting to set up a business, there is no right or wrong time. There were 2 of the 17 or 18 year olds, who told me they were already making money running their own little businesses. One a cake / confectioners, the other buying shrimp. (A bit random for Manchester – mind you if you can make money trading shrimp in Manchester, my money is on this kid being an entrepreneurial superstar.) Ironically, both these 2 young people told me they were being forced to go to university by parents who already run small businesses, yet they feel that their kids need qualifications to fall back on.

Crazy really. We dont look at qualifications when assessing candidates at UKFast. We look for great people and we don’t prejudice a person based on their ability to do well in an exam environment.

As my A level Music examiner said to me after I crucified Sonata in A, “If Mozart could have heard that, he’d have turned in his grave.”

"If Mozart could have heard that, he'd have turned in his grave!"

I failed my A level, and that same examiner ended up working for me a few years later. He often said, if he’d known what I was capable of on the piano, he’d have marked me very differently. But the system wasn’t and still isn’t built for the odd ones out.

It’s a good job I failed really, I think University would have been the death of me. It would have given me the confidence to write a CV and go for interviews. It was this lack of confidence in my ability to get a job that forced me to set up my own business. Ironic really, especially as you can set up a business without a single qualification. You just need the passion and the determination and a bit of belief. The rest will come as I am finding.

I got the impression these kids just wanted to be told that they could succeed, but no one tells them that. No one wants to build up their hopes for fear they might get knocked down. The economy doesn’t help, it discourages entrepreneurialism and whilst I don’t think this is a deliberate act, I do think it’s an inevitability from the constant doom and gloom that surrounds modern politics today.

Bloxham was selling posters in Afflecks Palace, Ferguson had just arrived at United, Tony Wilson was giving the Factory a whole new meaning. Tim Bacon was a barman in JWJohnsons, Oglesby was at Cheadle Hulme where only weeks earlier I’d been playing against him on the great British rugby fields.

Bruno was holding centre stage at the French Restaurant, at the then Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza, Midland Hotel. I was the cheeky piano player busking my way through life.

I had never been so poor, but I had certainty that something good was just over the horizon.

I learnt pretty early on that it was never going to be that simple. I took a hundred wrong roads and although I had the belief that “one day” I’d be successful, I had not found my direction.

That direction came after a trip to New York when I realised that the next era had to involve the internet. I was now 30. I had tried and failed in so many areas, and I knew my venture had to be the right one. Without time on my side there was no margin for error.

There is a saying that behind every successful man is a good woman.

That could not be truer than in my case. My chance meeting with my now wife Gail Jones was undoubtedly a great Manchester partnership. 200 yards away from where Rolls met Royce in Albert Square, we instantly hit it off.

Many people ask me, “how do you work with your wife?” I have never had an issue with it. We both focus on different areas of the business and whilst it is sometimes hard to switch off when you live with your business partner, I have had the benefit of a soundboard for every major decision that has ever been part of the shaping of UKFast.

Has the last 10 years been an easy ride? There is no such thing! Every week there is something new. That’s the nature of business and life in general. It’s full of ups and downs. 3 days ago I had the first of 2 operations on my thumb after trapping it in a door and slicing clean through the bone. I was told that they were going to amputate it the next morning.

Not the holiday on Necker I was hoping for. But after another operation and a great deal of determination, I am told now that it will survive! And whilst the holiday has been somewhat interrupted with emergency hospital trips, the kids are oblivious to any disruptions thanks to Danielle, PA come Mary Poppins.

So I’m sat here on Turtle Beach where my daughters found 2 baby turtles yesterday fighting for survival, less than 10 minutes from hatching. Today Charlie, one of the Necker team has just helped dig out another 72 other turtles that would not have made it. And what about my thumb? Well I am managing to type, and inspired by just hearing the news that I have been very kindly awarded the EN Entrepreneur of the Year title for 2011, I am reminded that around every corner is another exciting challenge and the only pain you feel gives you a bench mark to truly appreciate the great moments in our lives.

I know my children will never forget today and the freeing of what seems like hundreds of turtles as they swim for safety around the girls ankles. I will never forget this day for very different reasons.

I haven’t won many things in my life and its typical that I am not there to celebrate with my colleagues and friends without whom I’d be average at best. However to be awarded this is just one of those moments in my life where I stopped, took a sharp intake of breath, filled my lungs and had to brace myself.

I am honoured to accept such a title. Do I deserve it? Not in a month of Sundays.  What does it mean to me now? If I thought there was any let up on the road ahead, I was mistaken. I now have an added responsibility to live up to all those kind people who have belief in me. Thank you I am truly honoured.

It seems doubly special that I find out on Necker Island, home of a great inspiration, friend and in my opinion Britain’s greatest living Entrepreneur.

If you don’t mind I have some turtles to attend to.

Lawrence Jones holding baby turtle on Necker Island

Sat here on the Necker Belle with my daughters Tegan and Poppy, my wife and business partner Gail, the girl who has stood by my side throughout all the tough times, waiting for my team to arrive.

You might at first think that it is easy to get carried away and think we’ve made it, but to the contrary, this trip is intended to help design the vision for the future. There is also a little holidaying thrown in for good measure, but ultimately we have a job to do.

The owners of HP, Bill and Dave took their key people away to a vineyard when their business was 15 years old, to crystallise their vision. It feels like one of those junction moments when we choose another mountain to climb.

So often I try to stop and think at UKFast, however the business is so much bigger now and my responsibilities are far greater, I find I never have a spare minute. If I go into work, I end up straight at the coalface. This is partly because I love it there. I love the graft and the banter from the boys and girls on the sales floor. I love the commitment from the support team, the innovators in the engine room, I love every corner of the business. The environment is inspiring; you can feel the pace as soon as you enter the top floor of City Tower and once you are in, you can’t stop.

But there are a great many decisions to make now, that in the old days, there was just less to do and more time.

So stepping back is key to being able to clear your mind in order to make the right decision. Having people around you that you trust that understand your personality and ability is also essential, that is why having directors here onboard and PA’s to catalogue the events is crucial if we are to get the absolute best result possible.

You don’t want yes men, you want people who understand when something is not right, who know how to explain when you are going in the wrong direction.

We’ve dropped anchor, and I am waiting for their plane to fly over the boat, into the tiny airport on Beef Island. It’s hard to explain how I feel at the moment. If you’d been there the very first day Neil came to do a day for free to see if he fitted the bill, you’d know what I mean.

He arrived at the door of our tiny 2 person office, a place where the 3 of us would later cram in for the next couple of years, with a computer monitor for a head; quite an apt vision really as he spent the next 12 years with his head in a box for us. He made about 5 or 6 journeys to his double-parked car before he was able to set up what I can only describe as the 2^nd largest computer Manchester has ever seen, the first being the famous First Computer in Manchester University, now in the Museum of Science and Industry. I had a great feeling. A little like the one now. I suppose its because at the time I imagined just how much work went in to dismantling his computer at home and then packing the car before he even arrived at our office. The act itself was a demonstration that this was a “giving person,” someone who is able to sacrifice his own time and needs for a bigger picture.

I threw a piece of rolled up paper to get Gail’s attention and mouthed. “I am going to make that boy a millionaire.” Whilst I haven’t quite achieved that goal yet, I was right about my judgement of character. I could not have built UKFast without the commitment of a right-hand man like Neil. He has developed inline with the needs of the company, growing from boy to man, from computer assembler to director. I had obviously seen something that day that made me think “director material.” It was a gut reaction and one that turned out to be as important and lucky as me bumping into Gail just a few months earlier.

You need a blend of luck when you are setting up something and going against all odds to try and build something lasting and worthwhile. Gail had found Neil in a basement in the Arndale Shopping Centre assembling and networking computers. How did a kid from Salford find himself such an integral part in one of the Internet’s fastest growing technology providers? There has to be luck in business and if you get a chance, you have to take it.

So as the plane flys over in the distance, the crew set off to pick up our shipmates up from the airport. I know that Gail and I are going to enjoy this experience even more than the team will. I believe this will be a defining moment that we will look back and say, “Remember the week on the Necker Belle?”

I believe being in business is about sharing. You share the hard slog and therefore you should share the good times together too. I don’t care what business sector you are in, I enjoy eating and partying with my team as much I understand the need to be a shoulder for them too at times of trouble.

It’s often said in business that you should treat your customers how you want to be treated yourself, and this is good advice, but I’d add to this, “treat your staff like you’d treat your friends.”

Why? Because if you genuinely care about the individuals who work with you and you demonstrate your commitment to them as you might a friend, they are always going to put a higher level of commitment in, and their results are directly proportional to your efforts.

I can see the speedboat coming.

This applies to all walks of life, athletes, business, musicians etc. You require levels of discipline that exceed the norm and the fruits of your labour are usually directly proportional to the effort and care you put in.

This week I was invited to Manchester Town Hall for a civic welcome for Gábor Takács-Nagy. A Hungarian musician who joined the Manchester Camerata this summer as the Orchestra Leader.

After a quick introduction, Gabor kindly treated us to a sneak preview of what can only be described as a new Camerata. The same people, the same instruments, but a totally different sound.

Standing up, casually dressed, the chamber orchestra lit the room. I was spell bound. I have seen the Camerata play a number of times, but never like this.

I am someone who spends a great deal of time studying other leaders in the hope that I may in turn inspire others one day with what I am able to learn and pass on.

This is one of the reasons I take my 2 daughters, 5 and 7, to events like the concert last night at the RNCM where the Camerata did their first full concert with Gabor at the helm. My 2 daughters were captivated and both fell asleep on our knees in their party dresses, to the most wonderful music I have heard in Manchester for a long long time.

It is safe to say, Gabor is an inspiration and if you get an opportunity, you have to go and witness it for yourself. If you can’t afford the ticket, please come as my guest. Either way, you have to come.

Gábor is one of those people you hear about in history from a previous generation, but you never get lucky enough to meet.

Yet here in Manchester, making himself accessible after conducting his first Manchester Camerata concert last night, he is in my opinion one of the most inspirational people I have ever had the pleasure to meet and our Great city of Manchester is a better place for his arrival and efforts.

And I cannot be alone in my thoughts, because the members of his chamber orchestra must feel something special to be able to raise their game to that extent.

I have met him a few times now and each time I leave a better person, lifted to a new level.

So what is it that makes him special?

If I was only allowed to use one word, it has to be “passion.” When someone speaks with so much congruency and feeling it is difficult not to get engaged.

Gabor uses raw emotion to lead his orchestra and watching him at work he balances his very dynamic and energetic movements with carefully chosen words when describing what is about to be performed.

Leadership is about honesty. You have to love and believe absolutely in what you do if you want others to follow you. Even then you don’t have a God given right, these are merely credentials to enter the game. You then need the passion to get people engaged in the challenge you are ultimately setting them. If there is no challenge, there is no game.

Finding the challenge can be a challenge in itself. Its essential though if you are to inspire others to unite and raise someones game. The greater the challenge the more likely you are to inspire the person presented with it. Its too easy to assume that everyone wants an easy life. Why on earth would you want an easy life?

When something is easy, it is no fun. The fun in life comes from developing skills to combat new hurdles.

Something only becomes satisfying when you’ve picked yourself up a few times, dusted yourself off and run headlong at it again. Pretty soon you learn how to solve the conundrum and then its time for a new challenge.

When you sit watching musicians I always reflect on the hours they sacrificed for their instruments. My favourite moment in any film is the scene in Groundhog day when Bill Murray starts to learn the piano. Stuck in a timewarp where each day restarts, he eventually learns that he may aswell make a difference to everyone else’s life if he can’t improve his own. This becomes his challenge!

When you see him hammering the piano entertaining the whole room, it puts into perspective how long he’d been there; literally a lifetime.

And that’s whats required. A lifetime of commitment. If you want to become truly great at something, you better get focussed. There is a long road ahead.  If on your journey you want some entertainment or inspiration on route, please do come and see what I am talking about.

Mohammed Ali said, “I run on the road long before I dance under the lights.”

Gabor you have earned the right to dance.

All these questions need answering if you stand a chance of making a difference in your lifetime.

The answers you give are all relative to the results that you will arrive at too. The more committed, the more passionate, the more determined, the bigger the outcome.

The same philosophy applies to everything in life, sport, parenting, education. It is so simple, if you want to be good at something, you have to get obsessed and practice over and over again until you become an expert. As Tony Robbins says, “Repetition is the mother of skill.”

Show me an expert and you will see in front of you a dedicated and committed person who understands the importance of self sacrifice and application.

Its safe to say when I started UKFast, I was a rookie, and although I had been in business 12 years or so before as a musician and empressario, I had learned a great many lessons, however I was not really equipped for what lay ahead. I was also still making the same mistakes over and over again, not learning.

And now, although I have leant an enormous amount helping get UKFast up to its present size, I find myself at that rookie stage again.

Its one of the challenges of running a business that is constantly growing. As soon as you get comfortable with the business, you wake up one morning and the number of people in the office has doubled again. With a plan to add 100 staff to UKFast over the next 18 months I have it all to do.

I suppose this is one of the reasons why I get up in the morning. It might also explain why I get up so early!

I am often asked “what drives you?” Its a great question because I am not 100% sure of the answer. I originally set UKFast up to make enough money to go back into the music industry. Ironically I had to sell my 96 track digital recording studio to help get UKFast get off the ground. So that backfired somewhat. I lived for recording music and spent every spare penny writing and producing music. The music industry is further away now than when I set out on my journey 12 years ago. So if its not the music, what is it?

Its definitely not money. I enjoy a few of the finer things in life, however most of my personal money goes on sport. The only things I value in life are the people and relationships I have for the people around me. So maybe that’s it. Is it the people in my life that make me do what I do? I certainly wouldn’t work this hard for myself. This makes sense, I am sure those of you with wives, husbands and kids, find yourselves working considerably harder than the chapter of your life before. I just have a huge extended family now with UKFast and everyone who connects to her.

It doesn’t explain however why I have this obsessive gene but thats for another blog perhaps.

I was interviewed by 2 dynamic ladies last week for an award we have been nominated for. They were clearly intrigued by the energy in UKFast. They asked me “what do you do when people repeatedly miss targets?” The right answer at this point in a normal business probably touches on “micro management.” I simply said, “people are always going to occasionally dip, we will offer them support, but invariably they will bounce back. If they don’t we will find them another challenge with in the business.”

They quizzed me further, I could see the doubt on their faces, however I was not about to tell someone something that I didn’t believe in just to influence a potential award. I went on to explain, that the only time people dip at UKFast is when they have problems in their personal or home life. Our job as managers and colleagues, is to identify these problems, raise them discreetly and offer a helping hand or a solution. I passionately believe that if someone is unhappy for whatever reason, you not only have a duty to help, it also makes good business sense. If productivity falls as the result of distractions, the opposite applies when people are fully engaged and really happy at home and in their business career.

The next part of the interview process involved the 2 ladies interviewing 10 or so staff and asking them for their personal opinions about the business. Jonathan and I were kicked out of the boardroom at this stage.

After a good hour we were invited back in. I was told “You should be really proud of your team Lawrence.” She’d asked them, “if you take away the beautiful offices, trips to Verbier, Wales, endless parties, the chef, would you still feel as passionate about UKFast?”

They’d all said “hell yea!” Stephen (a good friend and team member for 8ish years) piped up “this is just the gloss, I started when the business didn’t have all this and we were in a tiny office down the road. I come to work to compete, to make a difference.”

George said, he’d never woken up and not wanted to come to work. Charlotte who is my youngest manager at 24 this weekend, said “I know I can make a difference and I have the support of everyone around if I need help.”

I could feel the emotion swelling inside. If there was one defining moment why I work so hard and do what I do, its clearly linked to these awesome characters I am lucky to work with.

After they’d left, Stephen popped his head into the boardroom. He said, “It’s like I said to them Loz, people don’t dip in performance here. If they do its because they have problems in their home life.”

I realised just how far we have all come on our journey together. If my job is to help get the team aligned, here is a clear sign that my managers have a great understanding of people, each other and our values.

It doesn’t matter what role you have in life or why you exist on this great planet of ours, you are fundamentally put here to make a difference. Its safe to say the guys at UKFast do this in abundance.

However the facilities are fine if you just have a few racks and pop down every now and again, however we’d grown to around 300 which requires a large team working around the clock operating in the buildings. The facilities are not conducive to a happy working environment. They are cold, noisy and uncomfortable and as we did not control the building, it proved impossible to raise the standards to those we have in at head office.

We had to fight to get a kettle in to the building, then a table and after a stalemate over a microwave I realised that although you can attempt to influence decisions, people might change for a short period, however they inevitably revert back to their core traits when they get comfortable or put under pressure. My suppliers simply had a different vision to mine and whilst I respected it, I wanted to create something different.

From my perspective I believe there is always another level to everything we do, there has to be. Even when you have a break-though moment, there is someone somewhere doing it better than you. You either compete or die. And so the cycle continues. I wanted to find this other level. I wanted to put a stop to the tribulations the DC engineers were encountering.

The project was simple. Create something that is more “environmentally” friendly, both to the planet but also the people who work with in them.

However every site we found that was perfect for our new data centre, came back with the same answer from the United Utilities.

“There is not enough power available.”

We were given this answer to 22 preferred sites. It was explained to me that we require to more electricity to power our network than all the hospitals in Manchester combined.

Now there is an argument that the internet is helping reduce emissions, and people are now able to do more from home communicating better with people all round the globe. It’s an argument that I should support because it protrays UKFast in a positive light. Can you imagine the power saved from the millions of time and energy saving ideas of every UKFast client combined?

However, it doesn’t wash. I dont know about any of you, but I am not slowing down in other areas of my life. If anything I am busier. The mobile devices and information on tap from all these “time saving” gadgets just make us busier!

Either way, without power, there could be no data centre. So for a number of years we settled, focussing on our core business, building our cash reserves.

Sure enough the problem didn’t go away, it just got bigger. Our 1000 servers, soon became 2000, which became 4000 and then 6000. In the last year we have taken the 6000 t0 10,000 and in 2012 UKFast is on target to to add a further 10,000. And as our clients grow so does our need for electricity.

I woke up one day and decided nothing is going to stand in our way of progress. We took one of the sites we preferred and agreed that we’d take some of the £2m we’d saved and use it for the electricity dig and substation. From the initial £450,000 quote the actual cost of bringing the power to the new UKFast DC ate up £1.1m after we’d finished building the substation and with all the associated costs.

However the the game was on. We now had our first building and with roads being dug up all round Manchester for power and dark fibre, for the first time in my life I sat in traffic jams savouring every minute knowing that with every shovel they were busy improving the UKFast network.

The next move was designing the building. It had to have the technical space to power the equipment to the very highest standard, but it also required a space for people. Somewhere comfortable for them to operate and a place to relax.

We worked out that one of the problems for the people in the DC was the lack of human contact and interaction for the small team that worked around the clock. So we designed a training facility on site and built it in the roof space. A place where all new recruits now arrive eager to learn and start their journey at UKFast. Rather than the old Induction process, where the new starters go for a tour of the DC, we reversed the process and the new starters now do a tour of City Tower.

We also got a number of requests for people to work at the facility which proved to me we had done something right, so we moved the team who provision our solutions there too, giving everyone car park spaces with their names on.

We also added a “Clean Room” to the facility so that we have the ability to recover data in the event a disk gets corrupted, a valuable service when confronted with an issue in the dead of night.

A great many of our issues trying to accurately plan our growth are now vastly simplified and what started with a facility to house just our own operation rapidly developed into offshoots.

In the last 3 years my unit price for space and power have more than doubled. Our profits would have been wiped out if we’d not taken control. But I realised that the same is happening to others in our industry who require similar technical space. I was hearing rumours of businesses getting bullied and beaten up at renewal negotiations with one of my key suppliers, so when one of our contracts came up for renewal I took the trouble to engage with the Managing Director personally.

After experiencing what I can only describe as the worst customer service experience in the history of my 24 years as a business man, I realised I had a duty to build more of these facilities for anyone else needing space in Manchester.

The result, we now build Data Centres as well as filling them with dedicated servers and cloud infrastructure. Our list of latest recruits includes electrical engineers, a building company and  a General Counsel with plenty of experience of digging up roads and wayleaves after heading up the legal team at Orange for a decade.

Its amazing what can happen from a single meeting. 12 years ago, UKFast was born after we experienced poor customer service. We didn’t have a penny back then, and we have been valued at in excess of £70m.

To quote Ross Warburton, “every businessman needs someone to hate” and whilst I don’t hate anyone person, I certainly hated the way I had been treated that week of negotiations with our supplier. The day after we resigned the agreement, I acquired 3 more buildings to turn into data centres which will be ready before the year is out.

My new goal is to become the largest supplier of Data Centre space in the UK with in 10 years.

What started as a power struggle is about to result in one.

What is it about this man? He keeps on popping up on British TV, yet he lacks the finesse of Branson and the passion of Robbins. He most certainly lacks the humility that you’ll find in abundance in the other two great men.

He comes across as a self opinionated man who likes putting people down to make himself feel better. And by surrounding himself with sycophantic people who do not openly challenge him, it is no surprise that he slipped up this week, after telling engineer Glenn Ward as he fired him on BBC’s reality TV show The Apprentice: ‘I have never yet come across an engineer who can turn his hands to business.’

Is he right? Are engineers poor business people?

Actually to put this into perspective and illustrate just how ridiculously dumb a statement this is, you have to look at other generalisations, like racism, agism etc. White people can’t dance, black people can’t swim. They are just preposterous and there is no place for generalisations in today’s society. It’s so important that people stand out from the crowd. Isn’t that what entrepreneurialism is all about?

There will always be some people that fall into sweeping generalisations like this, however no generalisation can cover all people.

Sugar just created his own new ism, engineeringism. You can’t take a group of people and publicly denounce them on National television.

Correct me if I am wrong, but engineering is a trade. It is something learnt. So why would people who chose to learn engineering as a skill be any worse or any better than people who study music, martial arts, French or whatever takes their fancy. Actually, history tells us that the people who learn the skills have a competitive advantage when setting up businesses where these skills are required.

The moment I heard this bigoted comment, I immediately thought of James Dyson an engineer who cleaned up after revolutionising the vacuum industry. Dyson’s fortune, estimated by the Sunday Times Richlist at £1.45bn, is almost double Lord Sugar’s £770m. It’s safe to say that Dyson changed the world and is in another league.

Lord Sugar defended his remarks: “I was drawing on my experience, having dealt with thousands of engineers over the years. That said, I accept the odd example that has been outlined, although James Dyson has told me many times he is an inventor not an engineer.”

Dyson’s own description of himself as an “inventor” just demonstrates his humility, the trait so lacking in Sugar.

When you start to unravel the list of great entrepreneurs over time, engineers do play a huge part.

What car would Sugar be chauffeured in if Rolls hadn’t met Royce in the Midland Hotel, Manchester back on 4th May 1904. Royce was an amazing engineer and entrepreneur. Ironically, one of the first proper apprentices too, not the wooly TV type.

Royce started his trade in 1878 when he started an apprenticeship with the Great Northern Railway company at its works in Peterborough. When he ran out of money after 3 years he joined a tool-making company in Leeds, before joining the Electric Light and Power Company. He had a stint making dynamos and electric cranes and one of his first factories opened in Trafford Park, Manchester, a stones throw from where we built UKFast’s first Data Centre.

After seeing the equipment being delivered and installed to our new DC, I have the utmost respect for engineers. From the generators to the cabling, it’s remarkable the technology that we take for granted because it’s out of sight.

It seems that the greatest revelations of all time are born out of engineering discoveries and brilliance. The Internet being probably the biggest of them all and if not, it is certainly the incubator for the engineers of tomorrow. Giving life to other great engineers like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook who is giving the Google boys a run for their money.

What gets my goat is that Sugar continues to set such a bad example to fellow entrepreneurs of how to behave in business and worse still, he gives the public a very one dimensional view of what business is really like.

The great business people that I have met are like the great people from all walks of life. They are warm, kind and giving. We can all go through life taking, however to truly get anything of note out of life, you have to put in without expecting anything in return.

Only when you arrive at this outcome will you be truly fulfilled.

There are probably a few incredibly rich people reading this thinking “*ollocks,” yet the very same people who think that they are the pinnacle of their existence are the people who need to go back to the basics more than most.

I am not trying to be judgemental. It works for me. The day after my avalanche accident, I stopped worrying about what other people think and I just got on with doing what felt right. Then one day I just woke up years later and everything was rosy. I am not saying everything is perfect in my life. I am a million miles from where I’d like to evolve as a person. I have so much to do to improve if I am going to hit some of my goals, but I know what needs to be done and I choose very different people to Alan Sugar to aspire to. I once asked Branson if there is anyone in business who has inspired him, we were running at the time. He said firmly, “No.” he paused and said, “I do admire Nelson Mandela.” After another pause, “And Desmond Tutu.”

This supports my point that to be great, follow great people. It doesn’t matter that they are in a different walk of life. Great people will have similarities in their behaviour that help make them successful. Likewise, idiots have a habit of copying daft things!

On the subject of being an engineer. I surround myself by them because I admire the skills that I would so much love to posses. Being an entrepreneur allows me to tap into the engineering world and marvel at the things that are made possible nowadays.

Given the choice to aspire to be like Dyson, Royce, Sugar? I gave up Sugar a long time ago.

So next time you watch The Apprentice, see if you noticed he has a boardroom chair that is bigger and taller than everyone else’s. Lord Alan Sugar should stop taking himself too seriously and someone should tell him, people watch the show because of the uncertainty of who is going to be axed and not for him. Sorry Alan

Its good to see other business people and prominent ones speaking out about Sugar’s stupidity. Will King, founder of the King of Shaves grooming business and himself a mechanical engineering graduate, said he was ‘saddened’ by Lord Sugar’s very public statement, dismissing the abrasive business leader as ‘out of touch’.

Imogen Thomas on top of Ryan Giggs

The irony is, even though no one is allowed to publish information about the football player, the whole world seems pretty confident of who it is thanks to the Internet. Tonight a Scottish newspaper effectively ended the anonymous court order by publishing a picture  of one of United’s superstars, flagrantly writing “Censored” over his eyes. The Scottish Herald’s editor reported that the “English legal system doesn’t prevent them from publishing the information.”

And here lies the problem. The internet is a vast territory. It spans continents, it knows no boundaries, no borders it has no dedicated policing system. We flick from site to site in seconds, yet the sites might be hosted on the other side of the globe.

Whoever the footballer is, he may have bitten off more than he can chew. To put a global gagging order on every site on the internet would require deeper pockets than even those of a premiership footballer.

You have to wonder what went on during the alleged affair as there is a great deal of work being invested in keeping the news quiet, or is the player trying simply to protect his wife and family from embarrassment as no wife deserves adverse publicity.  The irony in all this though, is that he has done much more harm and created much more noise, by trying to bury something that quite frankly isn’t half as interesting as watching a grown man play “whack a mole” with the British Press. Just as he thinks he is getting on top, “International Whack A Mole” begins.

Before you start taking on the likes of Twitter, you need to take advice on the depth of your competitors pockets and the appetite for publicity these huge US Corporations hunger for. Whether the Premiership footballer wins or loses, Twitter wins the publicity game and really thats all its about.

With search volumes at an all time high for Ryan Giggs it does look like people are rightly or wrongly assuming it is him. There have been other instances of people being incorrectly named by the “offending Twitter site” too, so its important not to jump to conclusions.

Personally I couldn’t care less which footballer it is. What is fascinating, is peoples behaviour. In the same way Google has become the most successful and talked about business through the mystique of its “secret algorithm” it is clear that people want what they can’t have, even when its drilled down to news or information. Its the not knowing that is causing the snowballing effect here, and it is a lesson that all us marketeers should try and learn from.

Whoever is fuelling the rumours, gives Giggs the last laugh, as he is currently 2000% more popular than David Beckham and 300% more popular than Manchester United. His publicist could not have dreamt for such an outcome. If this was planned it was a stroke of genius. If it was not, then it still is genius and certainly a good time to get a book out. Being a fellow Welshman, I’d buy it.

And what about Imogen Thomas? The picture above clearly demonstrates she has come out on top. Her figures dwarf even those of Ryan Giggs for current search terms according to the latest internet traffic figures. She is being represented by Max Clifford and I think is getting the sympathy vote. She has dated Russell Brand and a string of celebrities and never felt the need to publicise the intimate details, so why the sudden panic and the need to put out a gagging order? It seems less about the event and more about strategic publicity.

But the last word is definitely left to the internet user on the chat rooms and the social networking sites. What is extraordinary and even more evident in cases like this, is that the Internet is here to stay. It has a mind of its own. Its unstoppable in many ways. It has defeated the music industry. It has destroyed the high street as we once knew it, it punished the broadsheets for underestimating it and even TV now settles in second.

The internet is a place where news will eventually get out. We have seen news from countries where camera crews have been banned, yet through a simple mobile device, the world can listen and learn. Long may it reign in my opinion. Super Injunctions currently cover the newspaper industry and as yet they do not extend to the wider audience. As a result it is very difficult to suppress information on something as vast as the network that makes up the internet. Yes you can shut down a site, however, you can’t shut down every site. I found hundreds of reports of the footballer in question supposedly naming the United legend, but who really knows and does anyone really really care? All this publicity doesn’t make anyone guilty, however unless someone stands tall and publicly states “it wasn’t me” there is a danger you come across as guilty by association.

Does information out in the public domain really do harm if a person does come clean? Andrew Marr is a good example of someone who put out a Super Injunction and then removed it a few years later. Marr decided that it was hypocritical and prevented him as a journalist from being objective. I think he got a fair amount of stick from his colleagues too. I don’t think people will be judgemental over the footballers behaviour if it turns out to be him. People make mistakes. She is an attractive woman. At the moment I dont even think that’s what people are interested in. I believe that currently the “not knowing” is making the story far more intriguing and as a result it is on the tip of everyones tongues. As soon as it is confirmed, it will be tomorrow’s fish and chips wrapper or pushed down and buried on the search engines.

Looking at Andrew Marr, it hasn’t done him any long term damage, his interview of President Obama this week reinforces this. Whatever the outcome, Giggs will always be remembered as one of Manchester’s finest assets, whether you are a Red or a Blue.

Considering the hectic duties of our Manchester business UKFast, a place which is aptly named, I can’t remember a moment where we have ever come up for air.

Yet, inspite of craving the intensity and fast paced business life, I never tire of the Welsh countryside and there’s not a more beautiful time of year.

Time out is so important and the bigger UKFast gets the more I realise I need the complete switch off. I have come to learn that the peace and quiet of the mountains is a great place for me to get the time I need to reflect on the important decisions.

Also, I love it. If I have learnt anything from my peers, life is so short, so just do the things which you enjoy the most. If you can combine what you love the most with what is absolutely necessary, you have the recipe for success.

You’d be excused for questioning why I chose a place where we had no internet, no phone, no mobile, intermittent heating and water over a more exotic location, but for a man who lives and breathes the Internet, this is the only place I have found on earth which is remote enough to disappear. It’s just perfect, it’s on my doorstep.

The journey back is always interesting as my mobile bleeps incessantly as it picks up the emails and texts that escaped me, listening to the news it is mind bending what happens in the real world in just a 2 week period. Yet if you think about it, nothing really changes. The world has a habit of carrying on regardless in your absence.

I am lucky that I have a great team at UKFast who know what they are doing and they have a habit of running  the business better when I am away! I am not sure what this says about me, however I mustn’t grumble. UKFast is a collective of fantastic minds and personalities and it is designed in such a way that it develops in line with the team who run it.

So what’s new? What is on the horizon?

I left the business after a record quarter and with a Royal Wedding imminent, there was talk in the business community of a disastrous April.  With millions of people timing their annual leave to take advantage of the bank holidays, I must admit I had lowered my expectations of what we should expect. Yet, in spite of the holidays and the whole world glued to the telly (including me – yes I found one) for the Royal Wedding, April was a respectable month and we exceeded my expectations.

There were predictions that the Royal Wedding would cost the economy £6 billion, yet as an event it showed Britain in its best light and it is wonderful to see so many people from all over the world coming together for something that we all relate to. Whatever cultural background you come from, everyone loves a wedding and as weddings go, what a spectacle.

In my opinion this event plays an important part in Britain’s recovery. A buoyant economy relies on positivity and an underlying feeling of confidence. I can’t remember an event in my lifetime that united so many people from so many different walks of life. It is absolutely what we needed as a nation. With politicians intent on debating process and problems, we need to build from here.

Gordon “Bennet” Brown’s doom and gloom era is long gone. There is light at the end of the tunnel. Its plain for everyone to see and if you are in business now is the time to remain positive and stick to your plans. After all, you can go away for a couple of weeks and the world wont have changed, it’s just your perception of it that’s important.

So when you are worrying about interest rates that may go up, or tax breaks that could be better, just remember that Britain earned the title “Great” and it’s the Great British public that achieved this. What is important now is not to forget that we are competing on a global level more than ever with emerging economies overseas. And this isn’t just in business, this is especially important in our schools and public services, in fact in every walk of life.

I was asked to talk to some children at a local school once and I prepared my talk around the magic of what every member of the class was going to achieve.

There is no better way to inspire a room of 7 year olds, than to tell them that they are the people who will be building the planes, and trains, hospitals and schools of the future. That they will go on to run and shape the world.

So let’s hope I am right, the signs are certainly there and we have a good cross section of businesses at UKFast and the general consensus is that trade is good.

And in the meantime, whilst I work away in Manchester, I know my mountains are in safe hands guarded by HRH Prince William who keeps a watchful eye on the mountain ranges of Snowdonia in his SeaKing helicopter.

Each season, we review the effectiveness of the relationship and the benefits of a symbiotic relationship with a sports club. There are a great many things to consider, performance on the field, management, community contribution, hospitality, the list is endless. In spite of a poor 09/10 season and some drastic management restructuring we decided it was the right thing to remain with the club regardless of potentially difficult times a head.

But a year on, with all the changes at UKFast and the recent changes to the Sharks squad and management, it feels the right time to hand over the mantle of “Proud Main Sponsor” to another lucky business owner and their team.

When we first got involved, Hodgson was an unknown, a little like us. I have watched him grow and develop into an awesome player, husband and dad, and it has been an honour to be his personal sponsor and friend. Its incredible to see my colleagues at UKFast develop in a similar way too. And along the journey teams change, I have lost people from time to time, its upsetting but sometimes people just need a change of scene.

I do think Charlie’s leaving will be a big loss to the Sharks though. He is one of the most underrated players in the Premiership. People naturally remember his early Twickenham and England appearances and remember a very young man who missed a number of kicks. What people weren’t aware of was that the England kicking coach an ex-school master of Johnny Wilkinson insisted he changed his run up and stance, in spite of Charlie’s superior kicking stats in the premiership.

It took Charlie a few seasons to building confidence to say “No!” but sadly the damage was done.

He has been an amazing ambassador for the Sharks. He is a very calm and well-respected player, both on and off the field, and even with all the difficulties with the appointment of Mike Brewer, Charlie went about his business and kept the players united.

There is no doubt the change in management style with Brewer’s appointment changed the dynamic of the club and when I heard Charlie was heading to pastures new, it is a good reminder that nothing lasts forever, especially where sport is concerned.

We originally got involved with the Sharks as a Technology Partner building their site and helping them with their marketing.

Back then the team played at Heywood Road where a few thousand fans stood in the Birtles.  I have lost count of the number of CEOs and senior managements who have come and gone since then. But the club grew from strength to strength.

We’ve been on the sidelines cheering them through their toughest times and through some tremendous times. I can count the number of games I have missed in a decade, on one hand. My daughters first game was at 10 days old!

The memories I have will last forever and I do not regret one minute or one penny I invested in the club. Jason Robinson’s last game, what an occasion, the dying minutes, Jason turned on his magic and turned a losing score line into a victory, in one of the greatest displays of British rugby I have ever witnessed.

Stood in the Birtles 12 years ago, Gail and I set a goal, “one day we’ll be the main sponsor” it was a pipe dream back in the early days.

So a few years ago when the Sharks lost their main sponsor McAfee, I was eager to throw my hat into the ring. We had grown enormously at this point and in a very proud moment we signed a seven figure contract. In fact to achieve this goal was one of the highlights of my time as a businessman. And in spite of the looming recession back then I still believe it was the right thing to do.

And now as the clouds lift on the recession, UKFast is blossoming and I have a lot to thank the Sharks and their fans for. We have grown 43% on the previous year and although this is marvellous news, it leaves us needing huge amounts of cash to develop more data centre space.

We have spent millions in the past 2 years building our first and I believe Manchester’s greenest data centre. It is due to open in June 2011, literally weeks away. It is large enough to house more than 12,000 servers. However in the last 2 years we have grown so much that actually it is clear we now need 5 times the space imminently. The latest plan is to build 100,000sq ft. This requires every available penny and more!

And so, in spite of the most perfect symbiotic relationship any business has ever had with a sports club, sadly the decision is made for us. It’s game over.

For a Manchester business wanting to align themselves with Manchester’s premiership business owners and colleagues, there is no better organisation in Manchester to support in my opinion as pound for pound the value you get from rugby sponsorship far outweighs any other sport.

I wish Brian Kennedy and his team, the new CEO and all the supporters all the success for the season ahead. You never know, as our business continues to grow, we may be back!

In the meantime, I’ll see you on the sidelines, like the old days.

PRESS:
Jonathan Bowers
jonathan.bowers@ukfast.co.uk
07720 222 227

Sat talking, he summed up the shortness of time, by describing the decade between the age of 60 and 70 as just “10 summers.”

It was a sledgehammer moment. I take time more seriously than anyone I know after my avalanche accident, or so I thought and here’s someone who’s summed up the importance of living every minute in just 2 words.

And then when you start weighing up different events in the future, like my 7 year old is off to university in 10 summers too, I realised that I really need to perfect this switching off and using some of my discipline to ensure I don’t blink and miss another moment.

That night during dinner another friend asked me to play the piano. I suddenly found myself having a ”Sliding Doors moment.”

For a second, sat at the piano with a room full of successful people, it felt like nothing had changed. These were precisely the sort of events I’d be asked to perform at in my previous life. However apart from being incredibly rusty on the old piano, there is one subtle difference, this is no longer my official job.

I have climbed the mountain and I am now on the other side with the guests enjoying the evening.

After thousands of hours sat at the piano dreaming about another world, in a blink of an eye, the dream is a reality. How on earth I ended up running a technology business, I’ll never know.

Back then, if someone asked me to run UKFast in its present capacity, a business with 125 employees and all the responibilities, I just couldn’t have done it.

Just like I learnt the piano one note at a time, I have had to learn the skills to run UKFast in a similar way. And like the piano, just when you think you are getting good, there is always someone more technical or more graceful or more inspirational, the same applies in business. There is always another level. Whoever you are.

20 years ago, I spent a great deal of time with some of the cast of the Manchester Les Miserable team. It was an awesome time in Manchester, when the Hacienda was centre of the world and the Manchester bands rocked the world. At the time, I used to play the piano for a living. I’d be in a dinner suit playing in hotels and afterwards, we’d all pile down to the Press Club or my house for a sing song.

A few months ago, Gail and I were fortunate to be invited to the Royal Variety Show. When the Les Miserables cast from London came onto the stage for the Royal Variety Show, the hair stood up on the back of my neck and I was filled with a massive sense of sadness as well as joy almost simultaneously. All the amazing experiences crammed into a matter of moments creating a overwhelming surge of emotion.

And when the young lady playing Eponine sang On My Own, I remembered my close friend Gemma Wardle who at 16 years old played the role brilliantly. Standing on the Palace Theatre’s stage in Manchester looking so lost, captivating her audience.

I recall a party I threw on New Years eve and as the cast of Les Miserables were all away from home, they piled around to mine. And on a baby grand piano in a flat in Manchester, we had the greatest line up of talent you could ever hope to see. For me as a musician to have such beautiful voices was such an experience, because they make you sound so much better. Michael Ball who was dating or married to one of the girls filled my living room with his booming voice. Even the next door neighbours who had a propensity to complain as much as my propensity to throw a party, marvelled at the music!

It was a surreal time. It was another era. And thanks to Facebook I am still in contact with some great characters.

What is amazing is that my current career couldn’t be more removed from the old days as a musician. What’s not changed is my desire to perform at the highest standard, that’s almost like a transferable skill that I have reapplied over and over again, and if I look back at some of my old friends, they all had that passion back then too and they all went on to be amazing and achieve greatness in a variety of fields.

So I wonder, what will we all be doing in 10 summers time?

With that sobering reminder of just how time flies, with the kids on Easter holidays, we’ve headed to the mountains for some Piste and quiet.

My 4 year old daughter has clearly worked out the importance of time already. She has just woken up and climbed in bed with Gail and asked, “Why are we only staying here for 7 nights? Can we ski all day until he night time because I love being on holiday and 7 nights isn’t long enough.”

Enjoy!

This sounded very much like a challenge. And as someone who hosts hundreds of online retailers, some huge ones too, I knew I couldn’t lose.

I bet them £1 I could prove them wrong.

Sitting with my web designers and marketing team, we immediately found ways of improving their system. Their e-commerce shop was clunky although the photography was stunning, the site could never live up to the brand, because the site was slow and the user experience was poor.

We got stuck in as a project and actually built Henleys a new website and content management system to help run it. I know this is some way from our core business, however we were helping out friends and after all, I had a pound at stake.

With in a few months of UKFast getting involved, the site was bringing in significantly more money, and in December that year, they did more than £1,000,000 on the site. We’d actually done nothing more than make the user experience the most important focus point. By speeding up the site and putting the ecommerce shop on seriously fast servers on the UKFast lightening speed network and the results to date, speak for themselves. We didn’t do any “SEO” or optimisation, we didn’t try and stuff the site full of keywords, we didn’t try and cheat the search engines, we built something that users would just love, and they did!

So what went wrong?

Well this is a lesson for us all. Luckily the site is still going and although the brand is taking a battering at the moment, the site is still in action, though sadly it is not performing like it used to.

As a marketeer, when you change something, you monitor it. If it’s good you carry on, if it’s bad you stop and revert to previous stage.

Henleys recruited some in-house SEO Experts. The revenue the site generated warranted more investment in this area and quite rightly, this is what they did.

However, in my opinion, they changed too much in one go to measure what it was that stifled the traffic.

Along with moving to a new web designer, they moved their infrastructure to their designers too which resulted in a massive slow down in site performance. This was not picked up by the team as when they viewed their site, it was super fast as all the images were cached on their machine. To a normal visitor arriving for the first time, they did not have this luxury, to them, the site ran incredibly slowly.

They also changed their domain name from HenleysClothing.co.uk to Henleys.co.uk

This is a fair enough decision in the board room, however, henleysclothing.co.uk was now a massive asset and well used and loved by hundreds of thousands of consumers. It was also very popular with Google who attributes “track record” historical performance information to every domain. A new domain, is literally starting again.

With a number of other UK businesses with the name Henleys in the title, Henleys Clothing descibed the business perfectly.

This coupled with umpteen other changes to their strategy and layout, image sizes, all made it impossible for even the best marketeers to monitor what works and what doesn’t.

The result, they lost momentum and they never recovered.

Sadly, they were already doing everything right and if they’d just left it, it would have continued to flourish at the rate it was.

We have all been there. When something starts to go well, we want more. Its not until you lose what you had, that you concede where we were, was actually where we wanted to be. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and this is why as a business owner or manager or if you are involved with an online business, there is so much information available to help you track your progress. The important thing is, no matter how excited you are for growth to keep the board happy, make small steps and measure. I call this Stop, Start, Rewind. Only when you get really good can you do the fast forward, however use this mode with caution, and if you really cant resist, make sure you have the right people on your team who will tell you the truth at every stage. More importantly, never put middle managers in between you and your key suppliers.

I had real problems reaching Ben and Simon once the site was established. When I was told news of the domain change I did everything in my power to get them information that I had on hundreds of other companies who had done similar things. I was always batted back to the same person who was pioneering all the change.

If you have people helping manage suppliers, make sure you check in regularly to ensure your team are not holding back information to protect themselves. No one likes being responsible for failure, so its imperative that you keep a close eye on the things that really matter in your business.

On a positive side, Henley’s still has a very strong brand, great clothes and if they can get the site back up to speed (quite literally) in my opinion this is fixable. If Simon and Ben are remaining at the helm, I’d imagine they will bounce back very quickly and learn from these very difficult lessons we have all had to face at some time or other. They are tremendous entrepreneurs, it is important not to underestimate what they have achieved building a huge brand in a very short amount of time.

We have an amazing statistic that the vast majority of people who leave our network, return at some point in the future. We had one this week, Gypsy Media. We had hosted them from early 2001-ish for 5 or 6 years. They left for a more competitive solution. They found that that didn’t work. They tried a more expensive solution with a competitor of ours, and after bouncing around a few suppliers, they returned. It is the most rewarding feeling, helping people achieve their goals. At the same time, it is a thankless task. Whilst it goes well, everyone assumes its the SEO specialists and the marketing teams, when it goes wrong, it’s the hosting.

Still I love it and its an amazing era. Who knows where it is going to take us, all I know I am going to keep going, small steps at a time, and measuring as I go.

No email, no internet, power cuts, sideways rain and no mobile phone access.

Brilliant!

Castell Cidwm is an inspiring place, a real hive of activity. This week we had various groups down doing different activities. A few of the directors were giving the UKFast Management Training Program a final polish, whilst I had the arduous task of taking a team of apprehensive colleagues through the hills above Beddgelert. I don’t need much of an excuse to get my walking boots on. I get a great deal more done in the peace and quiet of the mountains as opposed to being back in the office.

I have learnt that walking is a great place to discuss plans and get to know people. People seem less guarded, less preoccupied with portraying themselves in polished way in the countryside and by mixing fresh air and an increased heart rate, it also makes work more enjoyable.

Over the past 12 months I have been considering how to best manage UKFast as it continues to grow at a rapid pace. I have no formal business training apart from what I pick up from those around me and from the mistakes we make. With 125 staff and contracts of £14.5m already this year, it is a very different business than the one we started in 1999 in a tiny 2 man office on Fountain Street. But as it grows, do we have to run it differently?

This is a question I have been pondering over for some time. I think there is a way where we can maintain that small business feel.

UKFast covers a wide array of clients, SMB / SME and Enterprise and Government organisations. All these organisations require very different levels of care managing their solutions and after significant analysis, 2 very distinct groups emerged.

I remember reading Losing My Virginity and being intrigued why a businessman would chop his record company businesses in half when they reached 100 staff. It seemed alien to me at the time, as there were only 16 of us in UKFast when I read it. It was not something I gave too much thought to.

And so, after much deliberation and analysis, we made the decision to split the team into 2 new distinct groups with defined responsibilities. It was this new team that I invited down to Wales to walk with me whilst we discussed our futures. Being away from work gave the new team time to bond and digest the proposal and concentrate their energy on this new task in hand. I can confidently say I could not achieve the same result in an office environment. Even though our office is a great environment, sometimes you just have to swap the walls for heather.

The team left Castell Cidwm enthused and empowered with an exciting journey ahead.

The result is that now everyone benefits, both clients and the team alike.

Over our 11 years in business we have managed to win some amazing brands and like our other clients, we look after them and we support them through their growth.

It will come as no surprise that our bigger clients require more attention. They tend to have significantly more complex hosting requirements and as a result, they need extra help.

It is impossible to provide one member of staff for all of our thousands of clients across the whole UKFast client base, yet at the top level, we have clients now who get exactly that.

When I first heard the idea I assumed that the main benefit is that by keeping the businesses small it maintains or increases the energy in both parts.

Now this is true, but I underestimated some of the other benefits of the change too.

The main benefit is that instead of losing great people along the way, when top level jobs and management positions are already filled, it creates the perfect progression from Team leader to Manager, Manager to Director, from Director, to Director of a new division.

Each time someone is promoted, you create a gap to fill with enthusiastic team members.

And when you are considering bringing in new talent. Have you considered the ones under your nose?

A friend of mine told me “promote people to a level above they’d ordinarily expect. They will thank you for it and work significantly harder.” He gave me a couple of examples and mentioned a cleaner of one of his businesses, and how she went on to be the manager of the entire division.

It reminded me of some questions I was asked recently, one of them was, “What did you learn from your first job?”

I said, ‘the person brushing the floor, might be the one with the biggest drive and most potential.”

In short, I have learnt, never underestimate anyone as I was the person holding the brush.

It’s very easy to underestimate people. I know I have personally done it numerous times. It can be a scary prospect entrusting a position of responsibility to someone. It’s always a gamble. Yet it’s a bigger gamble when you bring someone else in.

Recently Sale Sharks lost their Commercial Director Nathan Bombrys. It’s common knowledge so I am not talking out of turn, it’s merely a good example. He’d been with the club a decade. He’d arrived at around the same time we got involved, shortly after the game turned professional.

He understood the club and the sponsors inside out. He was extraordinarily passionate about both the club and the owner. After about 3 or 4 changes to the CEO role, Nathan realised that the opening would never have his name on it. Consequently he decided to move on and instantly was snapped up by Scottish Rugby.

Over the last 10 years there is no supplier closer to Sale Sharks than UKFast. I worked alongside Nathan and helped him fill the stadium on numerous occasions. I knew that Nathan was undoubtedly the man for the job, I had first hand experience of this man’s talent. He was the right person, back when they gave the role to Niels de Vos and although I think Niels is a smashing guy, Nathan was the one pulling the strings. Not many people know that, but that is a fact.

A very clever Stamford professor, Jim Collins wrote that in almost every case of the businesses who achieve greatness for a sustained period of 15 years or more, the leaders were grown from within.

Yet it is hard to trust in talent you might already have. There is no right or wrong answer. There is just opinion and conjecture. Either way, whatever you do in business, it’s a gamble.

I always wonder who are these early morning “driven” people? Where are they going?

I have a theory, have you ever noticed how people seem to get more irate the nearer it gets to 9.00am when driving into work? Obviously it’s not everyone, there just seem to be more people stressed as 9 o’clock approaches.

What I need are these other people, the dynamic ones who want to squeeze every last drop out of the day.

How do I get more of these early risers on my team?

Later that morning, shortly after 8am, whilst addressing my sales team, I asked ‘how many of you have been to the gym already this morning?” A handful raised their arms. The rest looked rather sleepy. I was reminded of the chap in the black BMW. I used him as an example of someone who was making the extraordinary efforts needed to better himself and live life to the absolute potential.

I made a point of saying, “we need to find out who this person is and get more of the same.” I wrote it as an action point on the white board and thought nothing more of it.

I came out of the sales meeting and my PA walked up to me explaining she’d had a strange email, from a mystery man in a black BMW who’d seen me this morning and wanted to meet up.

Now is this coincidence or is there something deeper here? Something working at an unconscious level? Personally too many things like this happen to me and have done throughout my life to think its coincidence. The word coincidence merely exists to service the sceptics. I believe if you focus on something hard enough it will manifest itself in time.

One of the things we consciously focussed on from the outset at UKFast, was and still is to recruit quality people. Bill Gate’s quote sums up the need for great people.

“A people hire A people. B people Hire C people.”

We have a grading mechanism at work, Gold, Silver, Bronze that I learnt from Tony Robbins. After going to a seminar with my wife and business partner Gail, we decided to try the grading system. What was interesting, everyone graded each other identically and when we listed the Bronze people, the managers all turned and said, these are the people that sap our time and resources.

It’s no coincidence that we now have the most engaged workforce at UKFast we have ever had? There are still serious amounts we can do to improve it further, but understanding that we are a long way from the finished article makes us focus on the continual improvements necessary to achieve the very best possible.

If I knew the answer to recruiting the perfect person, I’d bottle it and put it on the supermarket shelves. As fast as I think I have a defined formula, I find an outstanding individual who bucks the trend.

Attracting great people is one thing, but its only part of the goal. Keeping great staff has to be even higher on every business persons agenda these days. With tools like LinkedIn and Facebook, if you don’t give back to your team, it is highly likely they might consider alternative arrangements.

It is a never ending conundrum keeping the balance, yet I believe it is an absolute must.

At last years Christmas party I was also able to welcome back 4 people who had left UKFast and now returned. I mentioned every one of them and publicly reminded myself of the sort of business we’d have now if they’d never left. One of the guys said that when he got the call, he couldn’t contain himself. He’d been enticed away with a bigger salary and title with all the trappings. What he or his new employer hadn’t taken into consideration is that he was never going to fit in.

We recruit on dynamic. For us it is less about skill-set and more about personality. If you fit in, we can teach you the rest. On the other hand, big personalities in the wrong environment can be a real disruption and need a very particular style of management.

My philosophy is invest in the selection process from the outset. I hate having to let great people go, simply because they didn’t quite fit in, or that they felt the pace wasn’t right for them. So many business people shy away from spending the money spoiling their team members, yet spend thousands on recruitment and retraining for people that they have to replace.

By keeping people, think of the recruitment fees you save. Think of the experience you keep on your team, the knowledge and depth of understanding that develops over time. Its not to be underestimated.

The selection process at UKFast, just gets harder each year.

One of our favourite uses of our training centre in Wales, Castell Cidwm is for the new recruits and for their initiation into the UKFast culture. Over the years I have received a fair amount of criticism for my tactics of taking newly recruited people away to a remote hideaway to take them out of their comfort zone. Our model has been described by more traditional business folk as barbaric and a waste of money.

However if you ask the members who make it, you will only hear of the satisfaction that comes from people who exceeded their own expectations. People inspired.

And I suppose that’s what it is all about at the end of the day. Inspiration.

I love taking people and helping them over achieve. Giving them roles or responsibilities they might not ordinarily earn in other walks of life. Its often the people who were told, “you will never amount to anything” that are the most fun to inspire. They have a point to prove and they are the ones who surprise their friends and colleagues as they develop faster than everyone else around.

So back to the guy driving the car who contacted me, although he doesn’t work for me, its inspiring just knowing there are others out there who are prepared to put in more at their own expense. It’s self sacrifice and its the only way to ensure success. Set your alarm clock 2 hours earlier, get yourself to the gym and start cramming in more to every single day. I believe you will be far more useful to your team around you.

It might sound like hard work, but watch what happens. A few years ago, I made a conscious effort to do precisely that, and every year I step up and add more to my schedule. It is certainly working for me, and I have a number of other successful people I know who adopt a very similar strategy.

See you in the gym tomorrow.

“I am disappointed,” I said, “but not surprised.”

Its the end of an era. “It is being made official in the morning and there is an embargo on the story until 10am tomorrow. Charlie Hodgson is resigning in the morning.”

I was leaving for Verbier in the morning, for a few days skiing and boarding with the family and friends from work. Charlie is someone who I’d consider one of the most underrated fly-halves in todays game. Underrated or not, you have to treat people nicely who work for you, and if you want incredible results my advice is you need to go overboard on the “lavishing praise” aspect of management.

The lavishing praise is something I learnt from Branson, and sitting here now in his home in the Swiss Alpes with friends I am reminded just how much he has helped me and UKFast in 2010.

The Lodge is a great place to reflect and the New Year is the best time to review and plan. I am here with a crowd from work and we wouldn’t be here if Branson hadn’t kindly offered up a few pearls of wisdom. It just goes to show you being nice pays off, as I am spending my hard earned money in one of his luxury properties spoiling my top performers at UKFast!

Team launch

So what did I learn and how are we different?

Well UKFast was a pretty good business going into 2010, but it wasn’t perfect and I was probably the biggest of a number of few weak links. I had no formal training to run a business of this size. With an anticipated turnover of between £17 and £20m this year, the business is very different from the one I set out on the journey with Gail back in 1999.

And although my heart and intentions have always been in the right place, I have been learning as I have been going along. Now this is not too big a problem when the business is small, however as the stakes get bigger, small mistakes can manifest themselves as much larger ones down the line. So it is essential errors of judgement are kept to a minimum. On the whole we have been lucky, but luck not something you want to solely rely on when everything you hold dear is at stake.

I needed help and fast. Ironically on this journey of development I have come to the realisation that as fast as I develop, I will always  need to learn more! This is to maintain the momentum that you create. Mohammed Ali said, “I run on the road, long before I dance under the lights.” This beautiful phrase is almost prophetic. There is so much you can read into this statement. You can image just how hard Mohammed Ali trained and how far he must have run to become the living legend we all now know and love. And what was his ultimate outcome? To be the greatest boxer? Or to change the world? Somehow I think the boxing was just a stepping stone for the latter and the momentum he created will live on long after his memories fade.

Tony Robbins sums up the importance of learning nicely with the phrase, “If you are not growing you are dying.” I can associate with this. The times in my life where everything slotted perfectly in place coincide with the times when I am consciously making an effort to develop. All the people I know who end up failing, simply stopped developing often riding on their past successes. They stop doing everything that got them to that place in the first place. The result, they get less lucky.

Going into 2010 was no different to previous years, I knew we had some work to do to maintain our spirit we’d worked hard to achieve since inception. Managing thousands of customers and hundreds of people required skills I simply didn’t have at that time. It was my first question I asked Richard B, “how do I maintain the spirit that we have had since inception whilst growing it beyond a hundred people?”

But the answer is not important and maybe something for another day, what is important is that I was asking questions and eager to learn other peoples opinions. You will find the answer to the most extraordinary problems if you set out on the journey to discover them.

And now, sat in the basement of The Lodge typing away, with the guys from work watching “The Hangover” which is swiftly becoming a cult film for our team in this cult venue, I enter 2011 really excited about the differences we are going to make to peoples businesses and their lives. I am even more excited about the differences we are able to make for the guys at work, all of them. I have learnt that my colleagues have the appetite to develop at a similar pace to me and they need rewarding just like I do too.

Enjoy the challenge

And reflecting on 2010, was it a good one? I certainly regard it as was one of those life changing years. One where I stepped up a gear and started listening, not just to the advice of great people around me, but also my gut too. Following your heart and fulfilling your dreams is where you are ultimately tested. Fundamentally isn’t this really what it’s all about anyway?

So if you are a dreamer like me, dream big and best of luck for 2011. I wish you every success. Go make those dreams a reality or come and join me on mine.

Lawrence

Good luck for 2011 from UKFast

I was about to start blogging about the fact that when you have a wife and children, suddenly you seem to become more successful. I first came accross this theory when Vernon Lord a then finance director at Granada jokingly commented that he disliked me, there is always a little truth in the jest. He said, “you have no wife, kids, loan repayments, school fees, ex-wives. You have nothing that ensures you have to perform.”

I reminded him that I’d never missed my target and that I was his most consistent performer. “That’s another reason, you have messed up my theory!” he said.

And actually, during the BBC Sports Personality Of The Year, I am reminded that my theory is completely inaccurate. Merely a coincidence. There are millions of unsuccessful parents as well as successful ones. I have the association of this,  just like Veron, because over the years I have seen people step up when they have children.

So yes, becoming a father or mother  is a driving force, but it doesn’t guarantee success and what about the individuals who are well on their way to success long before they settle down?

They announced the winner of the Life Time Achievers Award, David Beckham, he is a great example of someone who was inspired from an early age.

In fact Beckham optimizes real inspiration, and its something he has had since his childhood. Are the qualities you find in a David Beckham character the same ones required in someone who is successful in business? Absolutely. They are one and the same. However where sport has some great personalities, it concerns me that on the very same channel, we are spoon fed Sugar as the equivalent role model for the business world. Sorry Mr Sugar, I am sure you are a very nice man off camera and all aggressive finger wagging is just for TV, however you are no David Beckham. It does make me think we need better role models in business.

I remember hearing a comment from a senior official in the IOD (Institute of Directors) the year I was kindly awarded, Young Director of the Year, it was explained to me that the then Alan Sugar, (prior to his first title of Sir) was setting a very bad example in the manner he was conducting himself in the boardroom, saying “your fired.”

I have to agree on the basis that really you’d find yourself in an employment tribunal if you really behaved like that with your staff, so for young business people who are aspiring to be entrepreneurs, Sugar is not someone I’d recommend emulating. There are much greater leaders out there.

John Timpson being one of my favourites. Another man who is a massive fan of Timpson, is a friend and client James Kight of Printerland. He is a good example of one of those driven characters too, a Beckham of the online world.

Gail pointed out that 2 of Alan Sugar’s directors joked that neither had ever had a compliment in the 14 or so years they’d worked for him. I find this extraordinary and actually quiet intriguing. My real concern with Sugar is his lack of humility and if you have any doubt, look at the chair he uses in his boardroom. It is higher than all the others, almost throne like.

If you want to gain the respect of your team members, work along side them, yes direct, but do not “Lord” things over them.

And bending back to Beckham, it is lovely to see a grown man, a real celebrity genuinely humbled when picking up his well earned Lifetime achievers award.

And here is the difference, during his speech he talked about everyone elses hard work, he never mentioned his own commitment, not once. Great leaders take it on the chin and  blame themselves when things go wrong, but you can really spot the best leaders by their lack of appetite to take the glory. They reflect praise and credit others when they are complimented on their success. Beckham stands out as one of those greats, and his speech was a pleasure to watch.

Described by Sir Alex Ferguson as someone who hung back after training to carry on practicing, a joy to watch. You can only imagine the work he put in. He was 16 when he joined the men at Manchester United. If that is not praise enough, I thought HRH Prince William summed it up superbly, when he credited his “*skill, passion and dignity.”

Are these not the essential ingredients I am hunting down? Whatever walk of life you want to be successful in, I think this is as succinct as you can put it.

If there is one other thing that amplifies success and I know is true in my case, behind every successful man there’s a strong woman. Victoria Beckham may not be the most popular person in showbiz, but who can deny her strength of character. Victoria is a formidable woman and an exceptional business person in her own right. It is great to hear a modern day living legend like Beckham speak from the heart and credit his wife saying “she truly is an inspiration to me every single day.”

So maybe a wife is needed afterall?

Have a great Christmas and thank you for reading.

Back in 2011

Best wishes from everyone at UKFast

Lawrence

—————->

* “His contribution to football during his 18 years in the professional game has been exceptionable. As a player he has served loyally as England’s captain for many years, providing us fans with some of the most memorable moments of English football for a generation. During his career he has had highs and lows, but has always remained determined committing himself fully to his Country, his team mates, and to his fans when he is on the field to play. Most importantly, he is an example to young and inspiring footballers of all ages and stages of their career of how to play the game with skill, passion and dignity. Many congratulations David, a well deserved award” HRH Prince William

“Indeed it was a great pleasure to play with David Beckham, a great joy. He is a great footballer and I think even a better person.” Zinedine Zidane

Charles Dickens famously said:

“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness.

Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”

With all the technology at our fingertips in today’s society how can we not balance the books? Where else in the world can you get away from this sort of lack of control where you can spend more than you make? Oh yes, I forgot, the Banks!

Between the previous government and the banking community we really have been cast out to sea. Yet in spite of all the warning signs, the government continue to spend like it’s “going out of fashion,” and sadly our once great nation is precisely doing just that.

To make matters worse, we have a disproportionate number of school leavers wanting to please parents by going to University. It’s become fashionable. Everyone’s kid on everyone’s street has to go to university, or they are made to feel inadequate.

And where does that leave us? Well, with a big shortage of tradesmen, plumbers, laborers, plasters, electricians, builders, and too many students. The majority, who leave university with a degree in a subject they will never develop and worse with massive debt, and no real skills of any use to the new employer, who has to now start to train and prepare them for industry.

When I was 19, I had bought my first flat. It had 4 bedrooms and it cost around the same amount most students are indebted for when they now leave Uni. I was just lucky. I couldn’t afford to go to University, plus I was considered too dumb.

I am a great believer in setting yourself up for success, but looking at the government and their propensity to spend money we don’t have and their desire to pick on the defenseless, namely the students who have been lead in to a quagmire of debt, only to be told that its just about to get worse.

I don’t condone the riots in London last week, but the same time I understand what its like to be suffocated, and the only thing to do when you are beaten and suppressed is to fight back. The problem is there is no vehicle to do so in this country. So under pressure, fuelled by cheap alcohol, they let themselves and their fellow UK citizens down.

Sitting in the London Palladium you’d not have known there was a full-scale riot going on in the capital. When Prince Charles and Camilla arrived and sat down in their box overlooking the stage, you’d never have guessed that they’d been through such an ordeal.

I’d popped out just before the Royal Variety show started and saw the car the Price Charles arrived in, it had been attacked by thugs and a window was broken. Can you imagine what went through their minds as their car was set upon? And when the police were criticized for bringing the Royals to the Palladium knowing there were violent demonstrations going on, Charles merely said, “you can’t have a Royal Variety performance without Royalty.” And that was that. Looking at the pictures, you can see Charles sat upright throughout the ordeal; you have to admire his courage. I could not have remained so composed.

How do you tell a government that we are setting our next generations up for an even bigger failure when they cant see and wont listen?

There are so many areas where the government could focus its attention. We could get out of Iraq and Afghanistan. How much better off would the UK economy be (let alone the parents of our brave soldiers who lost their lives) if we’d not been misled into the “War on Terror” in the beginning?

We’d be significantly better off.

It’s a back-to-front society, where the politicians are untouchable.

As an entrepreneur, we are a group of people who do not have it as easy. We do not have a cushion to fall back on and the state that we so eagerly feed crushes anyone who fails to comply or who falls behind with taxes. Unlike when the banks mess up, small businesses are literarily wound up. And for those of us who make it, we are then continually wound up, by the civil servants chasing our tax in a manner that is indefensible; there is not a business in the world that would survive with the customer service skills of a tax collector.

Ironically “we are the hand that feeds” yet they devour our earnings in the guise of taxation. To add insult to injury, they waste money because the people managing it do not understand just how hard it is to earn.  I really wouldn’t feel this way if I knew they were spending our money wisely on good causes, but with the Expenses Scandals still fresh in our minds it is very difficult to trust.

If only we could take every politician and make them work a proper working week without expenses, on the minimum wage as part of their induction. How long would it take before they start to see just how tough it is and learn the value of our currency, but even then, would they spend our taxes any the wiser? I doubt it.

Why do people who don’t understand how to generate money run our country and run our banks? This is fundamentally flawed because I don’t care what political or economic degrees today’s politicians have, how employable are the majority in industry?

And whilst London’s burning, the rest of us graft whilst the same people who are still lighting the fires, digging the UK into the biggest hole in its history, blame everybody but themselves.

And in a way, I cant blame them either. They are leaderless too, rudderless, their jobs lack challenge and they are unable to think for themselves. What can they do about this spiraling problem?

Raise the VAT, charge the students, sell the gold, etc.

With all the riots, the bank problems and the worries of the wider economy and global recession, a couple of weeks ago, I sat with my 2 little girls trying to explain to a 4 and 7 year old that there are other children so less fortunate than us, and whilst we crammed presents in to shoe boxes, yes, shoe boxes in wrapping paper, I fought back tears as Gail explained why we were putting tooth brushes in there too.

It’s a messed up world out there and if there ever was a time for people in business to come together and make a difference, it is now. It makes good business sense too, to help those around you in your community whilst you still have one.

You dont have to make mistakes to learn, the smartest amongst us learn very quickly to avoid pitfalls, however there is no better way to solidify in your mind, when you get that inevitable thought, “well I never want to do that again.”

Yet even though it is a tried and tested method of learning and an important part of our evolution process, I know as a business person we live in fear of making mistakes, both our own and others around us.

An an MD of a company depending on the severity of an error,  mistakes can cost huge sums of money and even worse. How you deal with people making mistakes in my opinion determines your character and your integrity as a leader or manager? I have had to question my antics at times when I reflect over my career. Nowadays  I am deliberately adopting a much more relaxed style, I believe as your ability to deal with adversity develops, so does your character.

For me personally 2010 has been an amazing year. Not for the financial results of UKFast, we’ve done well, but we could have done a great deal better, but that’s hindsight. If I know even a year ago what I know now, I’d be in a much better place financially, but the lessons I have learned far outweigh any financial disposition. The lessons I have learned in 2010 shaped me as a man both at home and at work.

Warren Buffet took 18 years to make his first million. Now I am not comparing myself to Buffet. He is a one of kind genuis, however it does give us all hope. Think about it.

What went wrong for the first 18 years of Buffets business life? Probably a bit of everything. Its not easy generating cash from a zero start. I know, UKFast started with just Gail and myself in a spare bedroom with a telephone and plain good old fashioned British ambition. One of the lessons I learned then was to get an office quickly, or I’d have ended up with 8 children and very little of anything else.

Back on Buffet’s journey something inside of him must have changed. A light bulb moment, because after those 18 years of practicing, he switched into overdrive and damn near everything from then on in turned to gold. Suddenly he had an understanding.

This sort of magic doesn’t happen very often and sadly if it does, it is usually in people’s twilight years. I remember driving my first Ferrari thinking, why didn’t I have this when I was 20?

The simple truth is that I’d not got the experience, knowledge and confidence to take control of my life. I’d not made enough mistakes! Maybe that’s not quite true. I’d made plenty of mistakes, I just hadn’t started learning from them at this stage in my life.

Nowadays with everything I have learnt so far from both my own experiences and those of my friends, it is so much easier. What I am learning is that we over-complicate everything. The simplest formulas often produce the greatest return on investment.

I have also identified that making money and living your life to the full are directly linked and actually most people don’t fulfill their ambition for fear of making mistakes which is ironic when you consider its the people who just plunge in head first that learn the quickest whether its the hard way or not.

Schools and bureaucracy discourage people from making mistakes and actually its the one thing that is absolutely essential if you want to reach the heights of success. By having too many rules we inhibit growth. Rules result in punishment, punishment removes the fun and freedom to make mistakes, and this directly inhibits growth.

I have learnt that the more freedom you give people, the harder they seem to work and the faster they develop. And if they make mistakes, (because they will) what do you do?

There is only one answer to this question, give people support, give them a hug, but never criticize. The size of the cock up will be directly linked to the feeling of pain and remorse they will be experiencing regardless of whether you mention it or chastise them or not. In fact this is something worth investing real effort in. I have seen my team develop far quicker than before and actually this is true of my 2 little girls too. A friend of mine who works in the same office commented on our team “bouncing” and that they stood out a mile from others in the building. The only thing I have consciously changed is deliberately giving people more freedom.

Now I am not saying completely throw caution to the wind and take your eye off the ball and remove all controls. Merely encourage your team to think things through and ask for help on the tricky decisions. This will help minimise the risk of error and when people mess up, remind them of all the great stuff they have done and bite your tongue and not the hand that feeds you.

Ghandi famously said, “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”

As your team develops, if you are doing a good job you will wake up one day and you will be surrounded by awesome people who genuinely care about your every need and your sense of responsibility is suddenly extended to the lives of not only colleagues but the wives, girlfriends, husbands, kids and suddenly you are rich, but not necessarily in the way you might have planned at the outset of your journey. Rich from all the experiences, you will need a lifetime to pass on. And here lies the problem, with only half my life left, I have an impossible task ahead.

So inevitably we all have to learn a great deal of our lessons ourselves, which makes sense really. Its nice to hear opinions, yet how many times have you gone and made the mistake anyway. Its that freedom that Ghandi talks about that is truly inspiring. If you can have the courage to let go or rather let things go, you will ultimately get the greatest freedom of all.

Certainly not, and there starts our journey.

A little like Jim Collin’s theory on ‘the Purpose.” A business needs an unattainable goal to aim at for the rest of their days (eg. Disney and Walt’s “Purpose” To Make People Happy).

Just like a purpose, we need another goal, STANDARDS. We can do this easily from the comfort of the boardroom, where quite often we are protected from a disillusioned customer or team members who might challenge the status quo.

It is maintaining the standards that is the ongoing challenge. Anyone who sells a business and stops work, quickly finds out that they are bored. This is because maintaining high standards is more than a full time job, its a vocation, where you are never allowed to settle.

Before I explain I want to set the record straight. I am a big believer that UKFast is an awesome organisation, but do we have challenges maintaining our highest standards? Absolutely, ever single hour of every day!

So how do you maintain standards? And what are standards?

I believe “you get what you tolerate.” So whatever you tolerate becomes the level where you will settle. If you tolerate poor standards you will get poor results.

It’s when you choose not to tolerate something, when the complications kick in. If you are unhappy with a standard and you refuse to tolerate it, you need a driver to influence future behaviour.

There are only 2 driving influences you can use, Fear and Praise.

Fear is a negative driver, resulting in pain when something goes wrong.

Praise is a positive driver resulting in positive emotions such as empowerment, confidence, joy.

If you are successful in a negative environment and you have been fearful of failure, you immediately feel relief. Relief is an important emotion, but it is not a motivator. In fact it is the opposite. Once you experience relief it is far easier to switch off than re-engage. If you are no longer fearful and you have been trained to respond to fear you sit back and savour the feeling of comfort.

If you are successful in a positive environment where you are encouraged. It is highly likely that the emotions created from praise when you do well create positive emotions, such as joy, happiness. These emotions don’t allow you to settle. Quite the opposite, they build momentum and determination. They provide rewarding feelings for everyone around and people feel included.

In an office environment, if you berate someone in public, imagine what this does for the person you are embarrassing and also for the rest of the team. Everyone gets demotivated.

It gets more complicated too, as most business owners use a blend of both fear and praise. Some choose to use just the one. In my experience it is far harder to manage both fear and praise well. It’s predominantly the business owner who focusses on one of the drivers, fear or praise, that usually has the more extreme results. I use the word extreme, not better, because unless you try the opposite way for a sustained period, you have no measure of just how successful your business might have been if you’d adopted the opposite strategy.

The reason why I believe fear and pain is difficult to balance, is because people like consistency.

When people know a business is managed with an iron rod, they are able to plan to avoid the implications of doing something wrong. The fear is a great driver, (argued by many business people as the greatest of all drivers) people will go to extraordinary lengths to avoid pain.

If you predominantly rule your business with an undercurrent of fear, but you try a different approach for a time and start praising people, it has no impact. People are still fearful. Now you are just viewed as inconsistent and people don’t know where you draw the line.

There is no right answer, you have to find the balance for what works for your work force. In my encounters it amazes me how many more people use fear as the driver over pleasure. Personally I think it is counter productive. I think you get short term results and high staff turnover which in itself is costly. Life is to be enjoyed and who are we to spoil the party.

We only have a 3rd of our lives to ourselves, we sleep another 3rd and the remaining 3rd we spend at work. I regard it is my duty to ensure I create a space where everyone has as much fun as humanly possible.

We all have our own ways, our own styles and its important to respect each others values, but I love influencing others to improve their environments because so many people benefit. We have a healthy profit margin because people work significantly harder for UKFast than they might for a previous employer. I know this is true, yet people often say to me, “its easy because you turnover millions and are very profitable.” Well, we didn’t always, yet we have always invested in the team and their morale. And when I use the word invested, our biggest investment was our enthusiasm and passion for people. All people, colleagues, clients, prospects even competitors.

I have lost great staff who have been poached because they wanted to try something else. It doesn’t take long before the phone rings and they are discussing jobs with us again. People who were once successful, inspired and driven beyond belief simply drift in the wrong environment.

I come back to the thought I wrote earlier, “You get what you tolerate.” If you read between the lines with this statement, who is at fault? The person you are tolerating or you for tolerating them?

If you want to be successful, raise your standards, stop tolerating and keep praising. This applies to everyone, not just business owners. Managers, mums, dads, everyone!

“What’s that?” I replied.

“That feeling inside of you now…. it hurts doesn’t it.”

It certainly did and although I smiled, I thought, I am not giving him the pleasure of saying that again.

I realised why he is such a great motivator. That’s all he had to say, a simple observation, making me focus on the pain I was feeling and boy it hurt all the more.

I had been warned that this is Richard Branson’s game. We were the last to leave the beach, all the others had gone back up the hill to the Great House. It was after midnight and Richard said, “Right, who’s for a game of Perudo?”

If you were like me and had no idea what Perudo is, it is a game of dice that is played on the streets of Peru.

It was during the game I asked Richard if he’d mind if I’d interview him. I had spoken to the EN Magazine and they’d expressed an interest in it. Richard agreed to the idea and on the last day before leaving whilst sitting in his kitchen I had one of the most enlightening conversations of my life. It was a great moment with the kids playing with baby tortoises in the garden and Gail and Joan talking in the background, I really felt a million dollars.

To get advice and insights from a man like Branson is a serious gift and that’s one of the reasons I feel the need to share them. He is a man who does things the “wrong way,” he bucks convention and he is one of the few men alive who have managed to create, maintain and grow huge corporations yet maintain his entrepreneurial flair.

So when he talks, I listen.

Without spoiling the interview, one of the things I highlighted is Richards propensity to compete, at everything.

He plays tennis twice a day, he is always playing chess, backgammon, or racing round the island on a catermaran or kite surf. The man never stops, but there is always a challenge imbedded in everything he does. I highlighted this and he said something along the lines, “life’s all about the challenge.”

Ten days later on business in Dubai, a friend showed me his computer screen and I read the headline, “UKFast wins IT employer of the year.” It was a really proud moment. I’d completely forgotten it was the week of the UK IT Awards.

It means a great deal to win an award because they represent milestones in our history. They are accolades that are owned entirely by the team and reinforce why we all work so hard at constantly trying to improve and better ourselves.

So this week, as finalists at the MEN Awards in Manchester it would have been the “triple” if we’d picked it up. We were in the £10m to £25m category. We’d previously won the under £10m group in 2008.

It was a disappointment even though I wasn’t truly expecting us to win it. It was jolly decent of them to include us again, and as they announced the winner, I remembered that Branson moment. I focussed on the pain of losing and turned up the dial and as I did, I began to understand.

It was right that we didn’t win it. We can do so much better. There aren’t more hours in the  day, yet we are wasting time by not being as organised as we could be. I savored the moment. This is the fuel that I need to rise to the next level and understanding this fills me with confidence. I realised that losing is as important as winning and the sinking feeling of losing is actually a great motivator.

Back in the kitchen on Necker, I reminded Richard of one of his biggest losses. I asked him how he felt after the Northern Rock debacle, where after huge amounts of work and courage to take on one of the biggest mess ups in banking history, his bid and his team, Virgin Money were ignored for a weaker state run option. He spoke at length about winning and losing and on this particular occasion, he said, “Oh, I went out and got completely pissed!”

I now understood. It is the avoidance of feeling failure that partly drives him. It is common sense, if you remember the feeling, you are more likely to work harder to avoid it. I remembered just how motivated I was to improve when playing Peruda.

As a man who has had plenty of practice of getting things wrong, I have been using failure as an effective mechanism to inspire change without knowing it. But this time with the added weight of my entire focus on my failure to bring home the prize to the most deserving workforce I have ever had the pleasure to work along side, I felt sick.

That feeling drove to ask  the question, “What else can I do to drive UKFast even further, even faster making our product the very best in the market place and setting a new standard in hosting?”

With all the great people supporting me, I do believe I have the answers, I certainly have the right team around me both in and outside of work. Looking through these new set of spectacles, I am beginning to think I have been over complicating something that is essentially very simple.

But strangely, that horrible empty feeling became almost pleasant, knowing that I am about to take the reigns and step up a gear or two and inspire the UKFast team, after all I have only myself to blame, and only I can set the example. I have some extraordinary goals and I cannot afford to miss them. I cant imagine the pain and disappointment for all of us involved.

It is safe to say I am going to do everything necessary to avoid the negative association with missing future amazing milestones.

So I headed to Wales for a simple weekend in the mountains with my family and some of my closest friends. I am feeling inspired, truly inspired.

A few years ago I was a dreamer. A hopeless young man desperate for a purpose, directionless.

Today, I am a man on a mission. I know where I am going and why. I have a greater understanding of the game. I’m here to compete. I am on this planet to make a difference. I cannot wait for monday morning!

Oh, and back on Necker, I won those next 2 games by the way. I am sure you can guess what I said to Richard.

“Well, I lost them when I mentioned we have trampolines in reception. The 3 man panel looked a little embarrassed.” Said Jonathan Bowers.   “Their eyeballs were bulging. One of the men plucked up the courage and asked, “why? Why would you do that?”

He had been answering questions after a presentation for an award we are finalists for. They asked him about motivation. Its a classic question, because very few people truly understand what motivates people. They assume it’s money. It is never money. Most people use fear,  but fear is short lived. Sustained success is never built on fear.

I often wonder why people ask questions when they are frightened to hear the answer. I believe they ask the question, hoping to find the person who will agree with their own strategy. They find an ally, and this cements their reasoning why they do something in a particular manner.

Just because others follow, does not make it right.

Jonathan explained that the improvements in the office environment directly translated to improvements to our profit.

Well this sort of statement is a “red rag to a bull(y).”

Yet it is true, I can show clearly that investment into the well being of a team, significantly increases output. Yet this scares so many people. Is it the word investment? Is it the word significant? What is it that scares people into not investing into people?

My first objection I get, is the money objection. I get this one all the time. “Why do you waste money on such nice facilities?” Ask this question to James Kight from Printerland. James and his partner Graeme run an amazing business. I am proud to have them as clients and friends.

They moved their business from a string of terraced buildings in a residential area of Manchester to a beautiful purpose built office block and look at the results. Awesome. I’d like anyone to challenge them on this subject. Yet they were brave enough to make this decision and their staff retention and general well being significantly improved. Their team undoubtedly work harder as a direct result.

And not all the investments need to cost money. You can invest energy. Like Jonathan and my fellow directors, all of whom have the boundless energy. I believe this is the single biggest contribution needed when building a successful team. Are you doing the basics right?

First you need to look at yourself.

What sort of leader are you? Do you have a style of leadership already or are you working towards a goal? Can you learn how to be a good leader?

These are great questions and if you can answer these honestly, they will give you the answers to all your questions. When things go wrong, can you blame yourself?

Now this doesn’t sit well with all leaders. It takes a very specific type of person to be a “Level 5 Leader,” (see Jim Collins – Good To Great & Built To Last). Apart from the fact that a level 5 leader has humility, when things go wrong, they take responsibility for everyones failings on their own shoulders. And when things go well, they impart all the glory on others in the team.

Without this basic function, you cannot lead successfully. The reason being is that eventually, people will want recognition for all their hard work. You can only push people so far.

This is why PAIN does not work as a long term strategy of motivating. Once you have inflicted significant pain and suffering on people, resentment kicks in. The only thing you can build on resentment is more pain. But watch out, the bigger the amount you inflict, the more is coming your way, 10 fold. Or 15 fold in the shape of the Sale Sharks rugby team

Here is a great example of a leader who is inflicting huge amounts of pain, day in day out; but without reward. Worse still when they do well, they still get berated. The result; they have nowhere to turn.

I would never normally talk outside of the “clubs walls” however as the relatively new coach Mike Brewer publicly humiliated his players last night after a huge amount of effort on the pitch, whilst talking to the press, I think it is only fair to speak up in the players defense. After-all, as the leader, surely he has to reflect on his own inadequacies too. If the team fails, he ultimately has failed.

It is also important to remember that even if the result is a disaster, it is unwise to deliver a collective bollocking. “Why, do they not deserve it?” you might ask, well, some might. And the problem with a collective bollocking is you are letting the real culprits off too easy and the ones that worked their socks off, quite rightly feel really aggrieved.

This is definitely the case last night and there was good in last nights performance. A great leader looks despair in the eyes when faced with adversity, they still manage to highlight the great tackles, the run up the wing by Hodgson, the perfect kicking and yet, come the final whistle, they enter a silent dressing room, knowing everyone is truly devastated. The only noise is from their big hearts and the sound of the changing room down the corridor. This is pain enough.

This is the time you sit in silence with your troops. Savour the prolonged agony. Then in a calming voice, tell them to remember this pain, reassure them, “This is the last time we feel this together.” Savour this moment, these bad times together are as important as the winning ones if you truly care about your team.

The problem with running a small team with an iron rod, as opposed to a balance of reward and discipline, is that at some point something gives. When the pressure mounts and it always does, you as the leader have nothing to hang on to.

This is when you need the strongest deputy to remind you when you have overstepped the mark. But if your deputy is too young or inexperienced or fearful too, you simply are out of control. There is a fine line with being a tyrant and a stern task master.

As a leader this is where you need strength. You need to stand tall and take it on the chin. You need to be the last to eat, the last out, the most sincere, you are the leader. You are allowed to be fearful, but you must never leave. When you are in pain, sometimes it is difficult to think of everyone elses needs, yet this is how great leaders are born.

If you flee the scene as Mike did, you create uncertainty and mixed with a touch of resentment, a new game is afoot. This is toughest of all problems to identify and deal with. Discord. Once you have discord you really are in trouble.

When building a team from scratch, you need to be aware of the values of the current set up when recruiting. If they don’t match you have to envisage what your team will look like when this persons values are transferred on to the current set up. This is the job of a visionary. This is NOT easy, and therefore this is why people make so many mistakes.

If you bring in someone with very different values, prepare yourself for a long arduous journey of solitude and pain. If it’s any consolation, to the boys who played last night, it is not your fault. You have the support of thousands of fans, and although I have the most expensive season ticket in the ground being the main sponsor, I am not their biggest fan. There are people on the terraces who have followed them all their lives, they have followed them through thick and thin. The good times and the bad. They have memories of their fathers and brothers standing shoulder to shoulder, sharing every emotion. They have never left their side.

Its important to remember, emotion is directly linked to performance. You chose the flavour of the emotion. That is your responsibility as a leader. You need to invest huge amounts of time learning how to understand emotions. This is a massive responsibility and you will live and die by your results.

So in my opinion whether you are a rugby coach, a business man, a father, this is applies to us all.  If you create negative emotion, face the negative consequences.

This is an edited version on an experience I went through in 2001. It was a horrific experience, it was my worst nightmare. But which part is the nightmare?

Another great week flies by and what are we left with? What do we have to show for it? What can you say you did this week that was different form the last?

My concentration was broken by Jonathan and Paul who had reached an amicable agreement and were enthusiastically shaking hands. The negotiation course was a success. It had been a goal of mine to hold a training course up in the forest above Beddgelert. Its a 7 mile round trip in total from the house to the secluded lake, Llyn Llwellyn,. It’s great just sitting around the edges of the lake with your feet dangling in the water sharing a picnic and ideas. It is one of those special destinations where I love to spend time thinking. Rain or shine, it is heaven. I have had some of my best memories around that lake, it was Tegan’s first big walk the day before she climbed Snowdon at the age of 5 years old. We sat counting tadpoles and we’d been gone for so long Gail had seen the mountain rescue helicopter out and assumed the worst.

So the question on the tip of my tongue that week, was “if I was never allowed back into UKFast to influence and support my colleagues, what gifts do I need to give my managers and directors to aid them in building the UKFast brand bigger, stronger and faster than I ever could?”

It is very easy to call in consultants and trainers, however I hinted in my last blog that sometimes the answers are much closer to home. Who really understands the culture of your business like you do? Yet so often we look for outside help. I am as guilty of this as the next man, as a business owner / operator I have seen the benefits of outside intervention; fresh ideas, new energy and a different perspective.

At some point though, it’s healthy to stop and reflect. What about refreshing our own ideas? How can I really make this better? If you ask a great question, you usually get a great answer. If you ask an extraordinary question, you get an extraordinary answer. Too often, we cruise from day to day simply missing the bigger picture.

After asking a great question I realised that the answers have to come from within. All the senior people within the business need to discover the answers for themselves, to truly appreciate them. Somehow I needed to impart all my knowledge and experience of 25 years in business and at the same time inspire a similar result from my colleagues, utilising everyones talents.

Luckily I am following in great footsteps of some incredible entrepreneurs. The people I am learning from are simply extraordinary in every way. Their personal achievements, their professional achievements, their appetite for life, their hunger for more, are all off the scale.

I am a people watcher and I have made an effort to get to know people who are at the top of their profession. There is no better way to learn. My wife Gail might have taken this one step too far by booking me some coaching sessions with the World Number 1 squash professional, Nick Matthews. But do you get my point? If you want to become a great artist for example, go and talk with Mary Feddon, and hurry up she is 96 years old. Go and talk with Harold Riley, he studied underneath L S Lowry, and has painted portraits of more Popes than any other man in history. These are normal people like you and I, but unless you meet great people how can you learn the habits that will help you in turn become great, just as they have.

I remember thinking Lowry was overrated. I never understood why Lowry achieved the fame and distinction he did. It was only by asking a question at 17 years old in Harold Riley’s house, “who drew this?” I was looking into the eyes of the most wonderful protrait. A simple style, the sort of art I knew how to appreciate. I was knocked for 6 when I was told it was Lowry. It changed my stance from that day forward. I was able to look deeper into Lowry’s paintings and see something that I could never see before.

Riley obviously inspired by greatness is on his own personal journey of success.

So how do these once normal people, like you and I, achieve greatness? The answers are all around you. Look at everything that has gone before. Learn from every encounter. What have I experienced? What have I seen? Ask yourself great questions.

By setting down everything I have seen in my life, everything that helps me grow, I am able to catalogue a very interesting picture. I actually find that I am more experienced in certain areas than I previously realised. It also helps me identify areas where I need further focus to help me grow and learn.

UKFast Board in Wales

By getting all our directors to do the same, in an environment well away from UKFast head office, with clear heads and no interruptions, it is amazing what you will achieve. The results of our most recent summit I refer to are priceless and the impact of the changes we made are so apparent and invaluable.

It is amazing how resourceful people are and just what skills colleagues already possess. Too often we “take for granted” and ignore what is right under our noses. You learn things about colleagues when you spend time in close proximity for extended periods, that ordinarily you might never find out.

By drawing on our experiences we are able to build a much more complete management training program that suits our style. Every business is different and it is important not to blindly follow where others have previously succeeded. What works for someone else, might not work for you. A great deal of thought is required and this is why Gail and I chose to involve our board of directors over consultants.

We followed the format of training we experienced recently in Fiji and started the day off with a run around our lake Llyn Cwellyn. We then worked from 8am until 11pm each night. Most of the time outside by the edge of the lake as we were blessed with incredible blue skies and perfect sunshine. Not something usually associated with the Snowdon National Park.

Maintaining the momentum of a think-tank or focus group is essential. If energy dips, so does your momentum. If you are an organiser of an event, I have learnt to get everyone up, shake it off and do some exercise, bounce up and down if necessary. We broke up the day using the quad bikes too, the kids helped enormously, its amazing when you are sat around thinking, just how a 6 year old can contribute. Everyone’s perspective is vital, wrong or right. Each thought takes you in a new direction. Each cul-de-sac needs close inspection, often the breakthrough moments come when you least expect them. They are there to be discovered.

Where are you in your business journey? What are your thoughts? Are your needs being met? What is your opinion on the way we train at UKFast? Is there a better way?

UKFast is a group of amazing, dynamic, innovative people. When UKFast gets nominated for an award, it is the team that deserves the credit.

Even though it’s called the Entrepreneur of the Year award, there should be no mistake. This award represents the entrepreneurial spirit in UKFast, the under current that runs right through the backbone of this organisation.

Its the worry of letting everyone down that I think drives the emotion inside, as no matter how calm I am in the run up, something kicks in and in the seconds before they announced the winner, adrenalin is now flowing. Its a great feeling. The feeling of relief after the expectation and all the emotions and thoughts that gathered, bottlenecking waiting for the answer.

I went to Fiji with Gail recently to help understand our business better. We learnt a great deal about ourselves in the process. I remember doing an exercise, with Tony Robbins where he asked,

I had already said goodbye to my friends at school. It had all happened so quickly. One minute I didn’t have a care in the world, my focus was on next seasons rugby and the place I’d earned on the 1st XV. Then suddenly I was told I couldn’t remain at the school. My parents could no longer afford the school fees.

I never really believed this and as I stared through the gates I shook my head thinking at the double standards as my sister remained in her school. If one of us had to give it up, then I am glad it was me, but the devastation I was feeling knowing I would never again feel the exhilaration of playing in front of the school, representing the greatest schoolboy rugby team in Wales. An honour I had worked thousands of hours training for. I can never put this feeling into words. It was simply unbearable.

I opened the door, climbed in the car and faced forward. This was the end of everything and everyone I knew. I felt the resentment, like fuel pouring onto a burning fire. I was raging. I still am if I think about it.

I was never to return to Garden Cottage in the same capacity. I lost all my personal belongings, my identity, apart from a cricket bat, a photograph and a diary I do not have one a single thing that is pre-1986 in my possession. My parents sold the house shortly after to buy a hotel, all my belongings were thrown in a skip, so I never got to close that chapter of my life.

Its an emotion I use to power me through life, it gives me a drive that I still have never witnessed in anyone else I have met. I don’t mean to belittle anyone elses drive,  as so many people achieve so many great fetes, however I genuinely believe that the sequence of events that unfolded created a strange combination of hulk like properties that are truly imbalanced and disproportionate running through my veins. I have searched the globe to find a kindred spirit and continue to do so.

For many years I went from one disaster to another. No matter how hard I tried to be successful, my emotions were so extreme I was unable to win small, and consequently when I made mistakes I’d lose BIG. My father called this the snakes and ladders principal.

Then one day it changed. Meeting a girl in Manchester with the same surname as my late grandfather’s football team, I looked upto the sky, and nodded. The difference between coincidence and destiny is simply your outlook. A “cup-half-empty” person sees “coincidence” and “cup-half-full” character sees “destiny.” This was destiny, off the scale. The girl I refer to is 10 years my younger and still is funnily enough, she is my now wife Gail. She saw something in me that no one else saw and she is the only girl who has the strength of character to harness the passion in side of me, giving me direction and something to fight for.

It is this focus that determines whether or not people like me are absolute failures or absolute successes. Together we have both leant so much. We have become proud parents and I look back at Garden Cottage a house that I once thought as the ultimate dream that never was and I look now at my 2 girls bouncing around this place with my 2 dogs Indie and Lara dancing to Abba. Funny isn’t it, eras change, people change, different places, yet I cant seem to escape Abba.

I remember something Richard said to me on on Necker about his own personal drive. He said something along the lines that he is a different person now than he was 20 years earlier. He never conceded that he had less drive or determination, he is far too competitive for this.

Consider this, my runs with Richard Branson were all well over 2 hours in length. He was 59 years old at the time, now 60. Imagine what his drive was in his youth. I believe what gives Richard his youthful spirit and determination is the fact that he is still pumped full of testosterone and he is clearly proud of the fact.

Driving down the hill that day a tear rolled down my left cheek. I brushed it away with my shoulder. I remember every heart beat. I looked left at the huge garden wall unable to see a thing as the tears rolled uncontrollably, I gave up trying to wipe them away shaking my head slowly. I will never forget this feeling. The feeling of having everything taken away from me. I don’t want to forget the feeling either. The pain. This is the very same pain that drives me harder than anyone else on the planet. This is the drive that I now have learnt to love. This is the emotion my wife learnt how to harness. She knows how to open the furness door. She knows when to shovel in more coal and which direction to head me in. She also understands that once I have started, there is no stopping me and this trait makes the initial target so important.

I love a target. I love to compete to the bitter end. I love winning and I even love losing because I know I will have competed beyond comprehension. I just love fighting. I love pain, there is solace in pain. I remember on the rugby pitch I never lost my cool. Once in the USA, in New York I went to watch Pete my best friend play rugby. The oposing team was a man down. I put on a shirt to help the opposing team, and Pete walked off the pitch. He was very calm, but said, “there is absolutely no way I am playing on the opposite team to Loz.” They were curious at what Pete meant. Pete was always shrewd and suggested, “well if you want to see what I mean, pick anyone from the backs on our team and we’ll swap him.” We rejigged the numbers, they took the biggest guy and a I ended up playing for Pete’s team. We destroyed the opposition, we systematically dismantled them limb from limb. I organised the backs and the forwards into a military unit. I held everyone accountable and everyone one on our team knew what it was like to fight within an inch of your life.

There are a bunch of Americans who will never forget that day. It was a day they had never worked harder. A day they raised their standards where everything they tried just came off. Somehow these guys who didn’t grow up going to sleep with a rugby ball in their bed and weren’t drilled like Pete and I, played out of their skin. The pitch was hard and the blood and hits were extraodinary. It was an amazing occassion, one that I cherish. I made some great friends that day on both sides of the park.

How you harness the power inside of you is crucial. Your future balances delicately between success and failure in everything you do… but it doesn’t have to.

Firstly you need to understand your strengths and weaknesses. Strengths deployed at the wrong time are sometimes peoples downfall. I am lucky, I have Gail. I not only let her choose the destination, everything I do, I do it for her. I take it personally.

Secondly you need to understand what drives you, what motivates you. What events in your past really stir up emotion. Quite often these are your “limiting beliefs” and they are actually the things that are holding you back. For example, if enough people tell you you wont be good at something, eventually this will rub off and effect your performance. You have to listen to this then stand up for yourself and tell yourself “you are great,” then use the negative comments of others to drive you.  Stuff everyone else’s belief in you. You are amazing, truly amazing. Be inspired, be properly inspired you only get one chance at this life and this is your opportunity. Switch off your television, go and give your wife girlfriend, boyfriend, husband, children, friend, in fact give everyone  a massive hug. Embrace everyone, embrace life.  Get your running shoes on and get off the sofa and stop reading this blog and go and run and try like you have never tried before.

If you are looking to learn how to motivate others or you want to come and join me on my quest, pick up the phone and give my team a call. I am waiting to hear from people just like you. Thank you for reading. Be inspired. Loz