Some girls will do anything to meet Prince William.

According to the eye witness reports, it was an impressive full-summersault, with a “Ben the Chef” style face plant, which are painful enough off a diving board into the sea, but on Snowdon, this is one place I like to keep my feet firmly on the mountain side.

“The good news is she’s smiling, she’s a real tough character.” Jonathan reassured me.

I clearly don’t have exclusivity on being accident prone.

Our trips to Snowdon down at the Lake House (Castell Cidwm) are special. It is tough, and in windy conditions you have to keep your wits about you. And that’s what team building is all about. Whatever the elements throw at you, we pull together.

It sounds like the group this week had a real experience and thank God, Liz you are OK, its not every week you get airlifted to hospital by the future King Of England.

So my quick catch up with my longterm buddy and latest recruit tonight was an interesting one.

Joe joins the team to run the team building events at Castell Cidwm and offer another dimension to the team with regards to his experience running 15 gyms amd his own personal training business. He is an experienced first aider, and as loyal friend of mine he already understands our culture.

Earlier in the week he’d said, ”I have seen many businesses Loz, but I have never seen anything like this. I am not sure how UKFast actually works, it just does.”

His feedback tonight was great to hear.

“Now I get it. The team are amazing. They just never stop.”

And that’s Snowdon. By bringing the new ones into the fold and introducing them to the passion and energy, the new recruits are out in the elements and they either sink or swim.

There is no place to hide, the rests are short and as intense as the mountaineering and raft building.

They are “in or out?”

I have no regrets for the ones we lose. I don’t think any less of them, they will find a great home and business that suits them better. Its just at UKFast, it is a little different. Attention to detail is everything. We have to be very careful who we let on the team.

In truth we don’t lose many at this stage. The  recruitment process does a good job at finding like minded people. The ones that stay remember Snowdon and the stories for ever. We are able to link real personal memories with colleagues and friends. Its a great first taste of life at UKFast.

Accountants put a cost on Team Building and sadly the inland revenue dont help with the fact its not tax deductible, but once you swallow the cost and commit yourself to the journey of real investment into your team and their well being, the rewards wont be too far behind. There has to be a link with business success and profitability, however its almost unquantifiable in statistical terms. The result, it falls low down on the agenda for most businesses.

I am a firm believer in the saying,

“if you have something of great quality, and you take good care of it; you will have it for ever.”

We apply this principal to UKFast. Its competitive out there these days and with uncertainty in the economy, there is less and less margin for error. Its important to give your business the best shot. Its a simple philosophy and its one that is working very well for us. I am sure most businesses are incredibly thorough about their recruitment process, but what then? Its the next steps once people are on board, which help people and businesses blossom.

I remember getting a lot of stick from a business woman once for explaining that we regularly have staff over to our home for dinner parties and events. She’d made it clear this was a real flaw in my master plan and either way she couldn’t do it as the class of people they employ were not the sort of people they’d mix with. She and her husband have a very successful chain of pubs, so I was naturally interested in her opinion.

A few years on from first hearing that, I realise that my plan is not flawed, its just different. I totally respect other peoples ways, however I firmly believe that if you take the time to get to know your team, they’ll be more likely to fight harder for you, when you need it most. That being said, I dont know all my team members well enough, yet.

Its also important to point out at that following this method doesn’t guarantee success. But it certainly helps during the tough times and those moments when you cant be everywhere.

Even with the best strategies in place, there are always those anomalies that appear when you least expect it.

I popped over to a friends business this week in London, and the man on the intercom didn’t want to let us in. We had an appointment, we were a little late, but we just wanted to view some furniture. I calmly said, “it doesn’t matter.” The man came to the door and in spite of us mentioning the appointment was organised by his director in name, he just didn’t want to budge.

I got a text shortly after this from my friend apologising and saying about his colleague, “He learns from his mistakes and now can repeat them perfectly.”

What a great line!

Will it stop me buying from my friends business? Definitely not, however if this had been my first encounter with his brand, then definitely YES. I  think you can often predict the standard of after-sales service on the customer service you get when you first engage with a business.

Ironically in this case, with spare time before my train home, I popped in the showroom next door and saw a great alternative, so it just goes to show you, how easy it is to inadvertently damage your business.

I am not saying a team building event would have guaranteed a better result, however there is a great deal we never see about our businesses, if you leave it to chance you are bound to have more hicups. The natural reaction I often get when I recommend team building, is that “we cant afford it.”

But the best and most worthwhile events are often the cheapest. A sponsored run to help raise money for a charity, does more to raise morale along the way. A pub lunch or just a face to face thank you and a cup of tea, can work a treat.

The philosophy is one of sharing. If you don’t already subscribe to these methods of running your business or department, why not try by dipping your toe in the water and take your team out to lunch and see if the next few days are more productive. Justify it with a work group and have some thinking time outside the office.

If nothing else, it will give you time to find out about your team and really whats going on in their lives. A different viewpoint from the one your managers might prefer to keep close to their chest. By showing interest, I find it automatically lifts the team.

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 here planning the next exciting stages of UKFast. Over the last few years I have been lucky enough to take advice from some extraordinary entrepreneurs. As a result I have helped catapult UKFast on to a very exciting stage in its development. We have grown year on year, not just in profits and turnover but in our resolve to make a difference.

By rubbing shoulders with people playing at a higher level than you, you most certainly develop at a faster rate.

We employ superstars. Are you in a position where you feel you have something extra special to offer?

You maybe like me 20 something years ago. No qualifications and no idea of which direction to go. On the other hand you may have every idea of your goals and direction. Either way, graduate or completely unqualified, seasoned professional, whatever your status, if you are a great person looking to do great things, I am waiting to hear from you.

If you are interested in meeting me and finding out what life and work balance is truly about, get in contact.

I can’t guarantee great weather. I can guarantee great food and great company, UKFast.

What are you waiting for? Destiny beckons……

Loz

Please contact Jayne Pitman and find out how to apply now on 0844 576 3999

UKFast
City Tower
Piccadilly Plaza
Manchester
M1 4BT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good luck!

This stereotype doesn’t exactly exude glamour and it goes a long way to explaining why half of IT employers are currently failing to fill the necessary roles. So, at UKFast, we’re working hard to disprove the theory that jobs in IT are boring and the rewards have been fantastic. We attract plenty of new recruits – over 200 graduates arrived at our latest open day this month – and we’ve picked up some fantastic new talent.

The CRAC Development Director Robin Mellors-Bourne is reported as saying: “Over 60% of non-computing students cited boring work as the main reason they would not join the sector. Employers should be able to counter that kind of perception.”

I agree. It is the responsibility of employers to dispell the myth that jobs in IT are always boring and it pays to take a step back and take a look at what we’re achieving to inspire the youth of today and the brains of tomorrow. At UKFast the technology we deal with makes the internet faster on a daily basis. And the internet is the biggest informational source the world has ever seen. How can crossing new frontiers fail to be exciting?

At UKFast our employees look forward to a five star working environment. Team building activities regularly take place at the Snowdon property and employees benefit from a relaxation room with table tennis, pool and video game facilities.

Because we’re passionate about what we do, we’re happy to invest in people and we offer a fast-paced working environment with fantastic perks, we have no trouble hiring the top IT graduates. I’d encourage others in the industry to do the same. Shout about what your company has to offer and let the world know just how worthwhile and fun a career in IT can be.

As a company grows it becomes more and more difficult to give the necessary amount of attention to recruiting new staff. But despite the size of the company it is still vitally important to get the right staff so as not to dilute your business’s overall skill sector.

To overcome this problem as the company grows, at UKFast we have hired an internal recruitment and HR manager.

Every day at UKFast we receive phone calls from recruitment consultants offering their services and in most cases that’s as far as our relationship goes. It has always been my opinion that with outside recruitment a business loses some of the personal approach it takes to find and employ the correct candidates.

Only internally can you really know what the role entails, what the culture of the company is and who would fit there. Internal recruiters are also more prolific in understanding the qualifications and skills necessary to fill specific roles.

A company grows using a sustainable competitive advantage, hiring excellent candidates who fit in with the company culture, who are enthusiastic and willing to work hard drives the company towards new heights.

I have found that internally we are able to judge a candidate, not on their qualifications, but on their ability to be trained in certain skills as well as on drive and ambition.

External recruitment has been compared to battery farming, providing bulk CVs with little thought as to the person behind the paper. In terms of poultry farming, internal recruitment is the free range equivalent. Each candidate is given more time and judged on personality, ambition, potential to develop skills as well as their list of qualifications.

Additionally, at UKFast we put weight on psychometric testing. This provides an all-round view of the candidate, especially those who become nervous during the interview process.

There are many ways to make sure you are hiring the right people. But I can stress enough the importance of hiring the correct candidates when growing a company.