The Day the Local Council Official Met a Serial Entrepreneur

At the tender age of a 45 years old, circumstances propelled me into the world of entrepreneurship.

It just happened out of nowhere. No personal vision, strategy, or plan, I drove onto my driveway at home, gathered myself to tell my wife all was going to change. I am going to stop working for others and go on my own. I had begun to feel I was holding myself back, or more to the point others were doing it for me. I wasn’t learning anything new, and nobody was listening, just pursuing their own self interests.

From leaving a very small, chartered accountancy practice at 25, with an enthusiasm to make the best of opportunities that may come my way I now decided to make the final leap, I jumped into the giant flowing river of free enterprise. I had no clue where it was to take me. I was utterly na?ve, trusting, but prepared for hard work.

I was determined to continue learning and experience as much as I could, there was a lot to catch up on especially from my starting point. I carried with me the burden to fulfil my promise to deliver for my parents, grandfather and teachers who had unstinted faith in me. I just had to perform on their belief and sacrifices they made.

I recognised my many weaknesses, especially a lack of ambition, ruthlessness, political nous, charm, a higher education, connections etc.? Through misplaced loyalty I had stayed a year longer than I needed in the professional practice to allow the recruitment of two people to take over my work. Caused because I trebled client income in the last two years of my articles. I had been told three years earlier I would need to find a job should I qualify; the practice couldn’t afford me. What on earth was I doing, that wasn’t my problem. Frustrated I couldn’t find a UK job beyond a senior bookkeeping role, I emigrated to South Africa on the advice of my dad and a relative.

It was seismic change. There were two strokes of luck, I married the perfect wife and by a sheer fluke was accepted into an international group based in Southern Africa. Perhaps they were desperate to recruit qualified accountants. I soon realised though I was to be surrounded by superb professional executives, many with MBAs and highly skilled engineers, but importantly of all, high-class accountants. I was to be elevated to the premier division of a global player employing very advanced business processes and fully integrated computer-generated management information systems. I had moved from playing for Notts County FC to Arsenals’ first team squad. Suddenly I was thrown into the deep end.

After just three months of doing routine group consolidation work the Group Financial Controller called me in to his palatial office, no converted cramped kitchen this time when I was in practice. He told me there was a crisis at the newly acquired Valves Division, their chief accountant and company secretary had suddenly left along with half the accounting staff. I was told to go and hold the fort until reinforcements arrived, after the rest of the team could be sent after the group’s year end. I just had to pay the weekly wages for 200 workpeople and the invoices. He informed me he knew he was throwing me into the deep end to which I responded, suppose I drown. Not fazed he then answered, learn to swim.

That was the start of a roller coaster ride for the next 20 years. At the juvenile age of 25, I was effectively the finance director of a foundry works employing 200 people, manufacturing all sizes of valves for the strategic oil, water and agricultural sectors of South Africa.

Working closely alongside their MD I recruited and trained new staff, completed their year-end merger forms, changed their systems to the group format and updated all the standard costs and prepared the next year’s budget. I worked as though my backside was on fire. I was one of the few white faces amongst a sea of black. Any latent racial prejudice was eliminated working so close to my black brothers.

My morning tea, served on arrival, was brewed and delivered by a teaboy, the same age as me called Jesus. Without fail every morning I was greeted with a beaming smile and a very happy contented soul. In truth there was some racial prejudice that replaced any of mine from my past, the preference for African children with their joyous enthusiasm for life. White babies never looked quite the same as the black ones!

There was a darker side though, Africa had some violent criminality where armed gangs targeted companies paying large cash sums in wages. I was told to practice using a ’45 Automatic’ so I could hit a cocoa cola can at will within 50 metres. This was for my personal safety on pay day, armed gangs didn’t give the courtesy of requesting you to hold up your hands in the air but would simply blow your head off with a shotgun. Practising in the open was a message to the black community you were armed and was no immigrant pushover.

I committed one mistake; the group treasurer gave me a telephone call after a few weeks and asked where was the money? My answer nearly invoked a blowing of a gasket, I had wondered where I should put the tens of thousands of rands piling up in the none interest bearing bank account, so I put it into interest bearing deposit accounts on the Jo’burg stock exchange. We have a system for that said the group treasurer, I will be down this afternoon.

I could not have done too badly as the MD wanted me to stay on and the group financial controller left me to it until he decided what to do with me.

It was decided I needed a more challenging job. They moved me to the giant steel and plastics business. I was the chief cost accountant for a site employing thousands. It started alright, but I didn’t at first endear myself to the Welsh production director. The material usage variance on the welded steel tubes looked impossibly good. I checked the computerised costing manually and they looked correct. I even went to the mill to see whether a different method had been used for cutting to tubes to length. Nothing odd there. Then I got the work study department to cut a precise metre length tube and to weigh and measure all the dimensions as well as the raw steel coil strips used to make it.

Bingo! The costings were wrong. Whilst the steel strip used, and the lengths sold were within specification we had assumed the length of the strip used would be the same length as the tube it manufactured. It was not, the tube stretched in the welding process by over 2%. That is why the figures were good, we were recording more footage sold against a costing saying it should be 2% less. I strode into the production director’s office and told him our costings were not accurate making the material usage variance better than it actually was. He just sat there puffing on his pipe smiling.

So young man what do you propose to do about it? For the first time in my life I went into diplomatic mode, I answered, nothing. I was thinking about putting a general provision for stock losses which would cause the same change so why not leave it alone, if you and I know the true numbers. After a while the answer came back, I will go with that young man and an even bigger smile.

He retired months later to be replaced by a very fiery Scotsman and the next encounter was not so friendly. Every week I ploughed through mountains of tabulations and noticed the pattern of efficiencies of several cost centres had improved and oddly many were exactly 100% to standard. Every Friday morning, I use to walk around the factory, but this time started weighing the semi-processed bins for numbers of components without anyone noticing. Yes, the operators were over recording.

Again, I waltzed into the new production director’s office and in my normal undiplomatic language accused his work people of fiddling my account returns. This time he went ballistic? that I should say such slander against his people. I was told in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t shut up, he would physically throw me out of the office!

I told him that I took his reaction as a refusal to take the matter further, left and reported it to the Chief Accountant. He asked what I intended to do. I said I am going to put in each month a R50,000 stock loss provision until the six-monthly stock take verifies whether I am right. It did, the stock loss was ￡305,000!

At the next general manager’s monthly meeting the six-monthly financial accounts were reviewed to go to head office for the statutory accounts, I duly reported the stock loss. So strict were the financial controls that an unexplained loss of this magnitude would result in someone losing their job. The production director was in a panic. I let him and the rest of the board stew for a while, the chief accountant cast a glance in my direction enough to say, go on let them out of their misery. I intervened and said, do not worry there is a R300,000 provision I have made so the profit numbers will not materially change. I did not have to explain how it happened the board was too relieved that all was well, and they would not have the head office executives around their necks.

Two days later, I was summoned to the group financial controller’s office. He asked me straight out what the R50,000 round sum provisions were for. He knew, I was forced to come clean. Then followed an admonishment, listen young man you have a functional responsibility to me as well as the line responsibility to your direct boss. Never do that again, tell me first, then a few choice words that are unrepeatable and basically told to leave and get back to my office.

He was right of course; I could have managed it better but the good thing that came out of it was the production director never did anything in the future unless I approved!

I could not have done too badly, at the end of my 3-year contract the offer came from the group financial controller for a fully paid study leave for an MBA at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg. Me, who had struggled to get 6 GCE ‘O’ levels at a further education college and no degree.

The learning curve had been steep and importantly I had not recognised the natural qualities my various mentors had seen in me. Whilst affable I could be very stubborn and relentless, I did not accept unverified assumptions, wouldn’t back off unless a rational reason was given why I should. The gift I possessed was the ability to look at streams of figures and decern irregular patterns as a basis to ask the awkward questions.

?The career path resumed apace, when I returned to the UK, I joined an international conglomerate based in the centre of London. Starting as a management auditor I rose rapidly to become the personal assistant to the Deputy Chairman. I earned a reputation for fixing problems line management were struggling with. The problems were very varying, valuing disposals, pharmaceutical supply contracts, huge chemical losses, production control failures, marketing problems, potential logistic disruptions, all dealt with expeditiously. The added touch, I never caused line management a problem if they were not grossly negligent. They would all happily have me back. I was a useful guy to have around, a mister fix it of sorts.

During all this time it never occurred to me why this was happening at such a pace. Looking back, now I know. I had been extraordinarily lucky young man but through mentoring I developed a gift to see the bigger picture. Just as important, my weaknesses were being filed away. I could be very tough and uncompromising. I did not take fools gladly, if they didn’t care what they were doing, but would be patient when people were being asked to perform beyond what was reasonable having never had the training or mentoring.

So, when the corporate world could not offer more, I became a fully-fledged entrepreneur. I became to? appreciate how hard it is to either start a business or introduce new innovations. I earned my bread and butter on fees for various deals and disposals for others to benefit. There were innovations such as wireless broadband, 24-hour convenience stores, continental café concepts, coffee shops, national fruit juice brands, automotive assembly plants, sugar refining, extraction of natural pharmaceutical compounds, etc.

It is complex enough operating massive manufacturing and engineering plants but starting even a modest business is a daunting task and at times problems you would never encounter in a large established enterprise. People can? at times behave profoundly stupidly and either block progress or simply do great harm for no benefit to anyone.

That is where I come to the title of this article.

You spend a generation developing your managerial skills, honing your expertise, gaining experience in many enterprises and when you think you are ready you try to start a small business of your own while there is always some idiot standing in your way.

The one thing I was not prepared for was the entrance of the official with a clipboard from the local council. I had started a business running a chain of convenience stores. These were not my own brand but a national franchise that for a turnover fee advised on fitting out properties to their standards, access to a national buying department, merchandising of stores etc.

A business associate, a partner of mine in a restaurant business, to give us a start offered the use of his ground floor office premises. A small team put together covering acquisition of properties and their refit, retail operations and office administration. We started with five outlets already operating and then acquired another site, previously a bank to do a retail conversion and the use of the first floor as our new office.

It was perfect, the right retail size, less than 3,000 square feet, an office over the shop and five car parking spaces at the front for customers and space at the back for deliveries. It was not part of any shop parade, it stood alone on a busy commuter route to Nottingham City Centre directly opposite the main entrance for Notts county cricket ground; Trent Bridge a Test Match venue. We were well on our way.

Although we had resistance from our franchise partner over site selection it traded enormously well and still exists today.

When you run any enterprise the entrepreneurial juices kick in. The first innovation was a small kitchen to offer hot snacks, development of branded chilled convenience meals produced by a local French chef and eventually 24-hour trading, unheard of at the time, we set ourselves up to do it. Although we sold at premium prices, we were there to serve to the best of our ability the convenience needs of the community, especially for emergencies. Babies’ dummies, foil for the Christmas dinners and always a couple of fresh turkeys on hand just in case someone forgot. You would not believe it, but people do, and we never had to cook one for ourselves for any of those unsold.

The business was a roaring success and several more sites were already in the pipeline. To get us really motoring we employed a well-known tv comic actor to do a series of local radio adverts. The first time I had written a set of comic scripts for a famous tv star.

Our convenience store brand was not that well-known in the Midlands as it emanated from Scotland. But we had the bonus of an international setting, the Test Matches at Trent Bridge. We set about how we could capture more trade and promote our brand awareness. The Aussies were due in August, six months away, so there were three planned initiatives.

We would temporarily extend the front of the store over the car park and offer all that was needed for the cricket spectators, snacks, sandwiches, and drinks. Even a selection of newspapers with articles on the game.

The games were televised across the globe, but our shop was out of the sight line of the tv camera angle. No problem, we would hire a massive barrage balloon, branded in our name and colours, and winch it up from the back of a lorry until it caught the camera whenever a ball went to the boundary. My dad, who was watching the game at home on his tv, directed us over a phone as to the appropriate height. Such was the comical effect of a balloon moving up and down on the tv screen it was mentioned during the game by Brian Johnson & Co. I surmised our antics inspired the tv comic series ‘Open All Hours’ with Ronnie Barker.?

I did say there were three initiatives. The last one, whilst the simplest to do, gave us the most problems. That is because we faced idiotic bureaucracy from a local council official as he met the white-hot heat of entrepreneurship!

I remembered from boyhood past that whenever there was a Test Match, the only clue an international tournament was being watched by millions around the globe, were the cameras on high platforms, the crowds entering or leaving the ground and two small notice boards placed on the wall of the ground. I then worked out it was because of the local council were operating a highly restrictive advertising policy. ‘A Boards’ you would normally find outside newsagents showing the latest news headlines or cafés and restaurants giving the menu on offer, all were swept away by council edicts.

We thought it a good idea to place three national flags below our first-floor office window, directly opposite where the respective national teams drew up to enter the ground. The centre one would be the Union Flag, on its right the Saint Georges' Flag for the England Team and on the Union Flag’s left the Visitors Flag. Not only would they advertise the game but would be a nice gesture to our visitors to show our due respect for their nation.

Given their size and elevation off the ground I thought this must require planning permission. I was informed in the March it did, but all I needed to do was sketch the relative dimensions and it would be passed to the monthly planning committee. Brilliant, and when can I expect approval so I can authorise the contractor to go ahead? The response, September. But the Test Match is in August I said, and it is March now. No concession forthcoming.

Two sets of emotions were set in train to produce a volcanic response. The first was the can-do mentality of the South Africans who moved steel mills over one weekend and my Grandad Speech who fought in the major battles of the First World War, Mons, Ypres, Dardanelles etc. The council official was given both barrels. If you think you are going to prevent me from flying my national flag outside my own shop, think again. My Grandad fought in China, Egypt, Turkey and Belgium and if he believed his grandson was going to accept this he would turn in his grave. We have a major international event, my business is supporting it for the benefit of the local community, and I am a major contributor to your Council funds. You try and stop me, and you will have every media channel watching you try and fail. Go back to the office and think again young man.

I am not normally so emotional, but raw nerves were being pressed as one. On reflection I thought I might have gone a little over the top to borrow an unintended pun. I rang the local MP for an appointment who happened to be an ex-Chancellor of the Exchequer and Secretary to the National Health Service. At the meeting he explained it was not normally a matter for him, but he would deal with it. He offered to ring the Council’s Chief Executive.

He rang me later and said he had fixed my problem, and the Chief Executive had invited me round for tea and a friendly chat. Feathers smoothed but on my return to the office a member of staff observed I had split my trousers at the back all the way down from the waist. So, as I left the Chief Executive’s Office I must have given a parting rude gesture. Well, you cannot win them all or can you!

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