-I taught for over ten years in a local comprehensive in Newcastle >
I taught for over ten years in a local comprehensive in Newcastle. I think the defining moment for me was the fact that the next step for me would have been to become a head teacher.
I wanted to be a head of a really bad school, and I’d applied for the worst school in Middlesbrough. I didn’t get the job; the reason being that I didn’t have enough leadership experience.
I thought about the best way of getting the amount of leadership experience that would prepare me for a job like that. I thought, I’ve got to be in charge of my own destiny here, so I decided to set up for myself in business.
The original idea was to go back in to education, but I’ve probably come so far away from that, its twenty years later, and there’s no way back.
One of my biggest strengths is that I’m good at working with people. I’ve always believed that if you can control a class of 30 kids, you can do anything. If you can keep them interested, motivated, and get them performing at a higher level, it’s a skill set that’s very similar to running a business.
When I decided I was going to set up in business for myself, I used a mental phrase which was whatever was going to happen here, good or bad, I was going to learn from the experience and I was going to benefit by it.
Roy StanleyTanfield Group Plc
