Defining Moments

I’d seen that my mum starting her own business had transformed our lives. I didn’t have an inside toilet till I was fifteen, but the difference that my mum’s entrepreneurial activity made, albeit on a fairly modest basis, was fantastic. We were able to… read more

Defining Moments

I started with a blank sheet of paper. I didn’t have an expertise in anything really, but I had a whole lot of ideas which I thought might be business worthy, so I just wrote them all down. My criteria was that it couldn’t need a lot of working capital… read more

Lifestyle Story

I don’t think any entrepreneur can say that money isn’t important. If you want to grow your business you need to earn profits to plough back into it to enable it to develop. But money hasn’t been my primary motivator. It’s definitely changed my life,… read more

Mistake To Avoid

Mistakes are something that you have to cope with; the only person who doesn’t make mistakes is a person who does nothing. The best talk on management I ever heard was by a guy called Brian Clough. He was talking about football management, and he talked… read more

Mistake To Avoid

We’ve also gone on business ventures that were strategically just wrong. We did a joint venture with Newcastle United which wasn’t financially disastrous, and I’m not saying this because I’m a Sunderland supporter, but it diverted resources away from the… read more

Secret

I’ve never had some wonderful plan and I don’t try and predict the future too much. You should always have a gut feeling about where you want to go. Some things you get a really good feeling about, like our decision to diversify, so sometimes it’s very… read more

Secret

If something’s our fault and we’ve got something wrong, it’s important to be honest and analytical. We have to ask ourselves what is it that we got wrong, not to blame other people in the process, and work to change things around. I don’t think anyone… read more

Secret

I wouldn’t recommend anyone to go into a business that they don’t have a passion for. I think it would have been a terrible decision for me to be an undertaker, as I don’t think I’d have had anything like the fun I’ve had over the last twenty years.… read more

How I... Guide

The big guys, the national travel agencies, embarked on a really big expansion. They opened in Seaham and smallish towns around the North East and there wasn’t enough room for the both of us, or all of us in some cases. Their objective was to try and… read more

How I... Guide

I was sat in the Sunderland office when I got a phone call from a friend of mine from school. He had a travel agency in Sheffield and said to me, you seem to be doing pretty well John, I wouldn’t mind spending some time with you. I said ok, and we… read more

How I... Guide

Business is about people and we employ 850 of them, so obviously it’s quite hard to keep that amount of people happy. But the principles are exactly the same- it’s about saying “thank you”. It goes back to the early days when we had one or two shops… read more

How I... Guide

We’ve got 329 home workers. It’s a great business model because it allows people to have flexibility and take their kids to school, but we’re very conscious for the individuals involved. Some people need that social interaction so we’re careful to point… read more

How I... Guide

Customer loyalty is fantastic. What I do is try and personalise things and not treat people as a number, but as an individual, because everybody’s needs are different. We also say thank you to them the same way as we do for the staff, and send them… read more

Pearl Of Wisdom

If the stream’s running in one direction, sometimes there’s opportunities to be had by swimming against the tide.… read more

Challenge

The travel agency was based in Seaham where there was no competition. When we applied for a licence the inspector came and looked at our premises. It was a licence to trade and without it the business wouldn’t get off the ground. A month later, we got… read more

Challenge

If you get into a situation where you’ve got some bad sales figures coming in, it’s important to be objective. After 9/11 our sales were unbelievably horrendous. We had some difficult decisions to make at that time like, do we keep staff on full time or… read more

Success

We’ve never really had any major financial problems. It was a low cost start up and we funded the growth out of profit. The total amount we’ve ever invested in the business is £80,000 and we turned over £300m last year. We put the profits back into the… read more

Success

We’ve won lots of awards over the years, but the one that’s given me the most pleasure by far is when we were recognised in the Sunday Times Best Company to Work For list. Business is about people and we employ 850 of them, so obviously its quite hard to… read more

Success

To see my staff happy and performing well gives me real pleasure. I created those jobs and to see people that motivated is the best job satisfaction.… read more

Support Story

A lot of my support comes from my wife and my family. My wife’s now officially a non exec director, but she’s always been there to help me when I had to make some really tough decisions. We’ve got a number of non exec directors in the business and they… read more

Support Story

I’m a member of the trade group. That’s allowed me to network in the sense that I’m able to talk to other people in the industry about the latest developments and the potential pitfalls.… read more