Thank you.
Has anybody heard of a lemming and what a lemming is?
Well if you don't know I'll tell you.
A lemming is a little furry rodent that basically jumps off cliffs,
into the water and drowns.
And they don't just do this by the ones or twos, they do it by the thousands.
It's almost as if a senior lemming, the head lemming decides,
"Hey guys, let's go for a swim!"
So, they all go, "Yeah! Let's go for a swim!"
So, they all run to the cliff and they all jump off
and it's like, "Right, now, everyone swim!"
And they go, "Swim?" (Gurgling)
And they all drown.
And society today is very much the same.
If you are going to a school, you might find a head lemming
which decides that they will take drugs, and then a whole bunch of other kids
will come behind and go along with that head lemming.
Or they might be lucky, there might be one young individual,
that says "no" to drugs,
and a whole bunch of other kids come behind.
And that's the direction that those people go in.
And today we will find that the business culture
has changed a tremendous amount
over the last five, 10, particularly 15 years.
And what I want to talk about today is ethical business.
If you go back to the literature that we've been reading
over the last hundred to 150 years of the success
of what's made businesses really work well,
it's always been based on character.
It's been based on things like integrity,
service, loyalty, gentleness, understanding.
But it seems that over the last five, 10, 15 years
it's been replaced, what slowly crept in.
And it's the personality ethic is where -
It seems like websites today,
their aim really is to manipulate you,
lubricate the wheels of a system
which would extract as much out of you,
as it possibly can.
So, what I want to suggest today,
is that the success of the world is based on character.
But over the last 10 years, it's like this personality has crept in.
Where there is no character, and it's all about lubrication.
And with that, could that be a contribution
to what's happened in the world today?
I think it probably has.
There's problems all over the world with finances, etc.
So, I believe then it was a character ethic.
Today it's slowly being replaced by the personality ethic.
I want to quickly introduce my company to you.
It started 14 years ago when a tornado went throw my hometown in Selsey.
I had no money, no business experience and I had a very limited education,
but I saw many tradesmen come down from all over the UK
to rip homeowners off.
There were cowboy trades coming down and they were basically overcharging
or even stealing money off consumers.
And I looked at the time at the guilds and the federations,
I looked at what local government was doing
and the central government was doing,
and I couldn't see an answer to this problem
where tradesmen were doing a really poor job.
So I set out almost from day one, I want to make a difference.
I want to bring something to the UK which is of real value.
I didn't set out thinking, wow, I want to build something
that is going to make me a tremendous amount of money.
If you build something which is worth and something the consumer
or business needs, and they're interacting with it,
and it's got that whole world "worth" around it,
your money will automatically flow.
I've never had one single business meeting around my board table
with my senior managers, saying,
"How can we extract more money out of people?"
That's never happened.
It's always been,
"How can I build more worth into what we are doing for other people,
how can we make more of a difference in what we are doing?"
But today I'll stand here, and I am not being proud or big-headed,
but we are turning over a 160,000 Euros a week.
And it hasn't even been designed to do that,
it's been designed to work on the character ethic
and to make a difference.
Begin with the end in mind.
So what does that mean?
I don't think many people today really know where they are going.
They really haven't got a plan for their personal life,
for their social life, their business life, their family life.
They really don't know where they are going.
And I just want you to imagine something for a moment
that you are at a funeral, and it's very quiet, very somber,
and there's a resounding atmosphere of love and appreciation
for the person that's died and there's going to be four speakers
and they are all going to be speaking about the person that's died.
And then you suddenly realised that it's actually you that's died.
And it's your funeral.
What would you want someone
from your immediate family to say about you?
What would you want
from someone from your extented family to say about you?
What about someone from your work?
And what about someone from a social group,
your friendships or something?
What would you really want them to say?
If you were to take the time - unfortunately few of you will do this,
that's my experience - but if you were to take the time,
and to meditate on those things,
you'll actually touch some really core important values,
and I bet money will hardly come into it.
Money would be a by-product, oh, I really wanted to help this person,
I want people to remember me for achieving this and this,
helping these people,
and of course money is that vehicle to make that happen.
But begin with the end in mind,
know what your final destination is going to be.
They say sticks and stones would never break my bones
but names will never hurt.
And my parents used to say to me, "Oh, you shouldn't care what people
say about you, or think about you".
I actually very much disagree with that.
I actually believe that what people think about me,
and what people say about me,
is really, really important, because it's my reputation,
and because that's a real core value of mine,
that's what I aim at all the time.
I would never do something to you that I wouldn't want done to myself.
So what's your working frame?
What's your end goal in life? Your end goal in your business?
Begin with the end in mind. Take that time to find out.
Also, when you've ouind that framework,
you can build some expectation around your life.
When you know what you want to achieve,
when you've got that framework and you are looking forward,
you can start to build expectations,
and expectations are key.
Without expectations, you just bounce along the bottom of life.
Expectations are like a magnet
that will pull you towards something you believe is going to happen
whether it be good or whether it be bad.
If you have got this expectation,
this job role or this business that I am involved in now
is probably not going to be very successful.
How are you going to act towards that?
But if you've got an expectation like, "Hey, I am going to start this business,
I am going to be incredibly successful,
and I've got this framework which I am going to work with
within my values, and these are my goals ..."
and if you feed upon that, it is like a magnet
that just pulls you towards those expectations.
But very often you can have those expectations
and then the pressures of life come upon you.
And the pressures of the cash flow, and the problems with staff
and the problems with the market and the problems with marketing
come around you
and those expectations can start to [unclear].
But hunger is the key.
Let me just read you something quickly.
"Fish are biting.
And after catching a 70 cm pike,
the local man raised the fish from - you know, for a photograph -
and the fish lurched forward and grabbed his nose with its mouth."
It grabbed onto to it so tightly, that the fisherman had to be taken
to the local doctor's, where a surgeon actually surgically removed the fish.
If you want something so badly, do you know what?
The chances are, you won't let it go. And do you know what?
The chances are you'll probably end up getting it.
Hunger is the key.
But you have to feed that hunger.
For me one of the biggest words in my life is significance and recognition.
Those are my drivers, that's what I work towards in my life.
And, how do I feed that hunger?
For me, I imagine being before my Queen,
"Arise, Sir Kev."
I want to be knighted, I want to be recognised
as the man that's ended the rogue trade problem in the UK.
That's my driver. That's my goal. That's what feeds me.
I picture that happening in my life.
Not just once a month, but I meditate it,
I meditate upon it, and I physically see myself in front of my Queen
being knighted for my services to the country.
But make sure, that you are doing it for the right reasons.
Make sure that it's not just for profit.
Make sure that you're looking at the character ethic.
People in their enviroment.
This is the key I just wanted to slip in at the end,
because it's so important when you're growing a business.
One of these types of meetings many years ago,
there was a Questions and Answers and someone said,
"Kev, how have you grown such a big business"?
And I've said, "Uhm, I haven't really grown the business,
I've never really looked at it like that, what I have done,
is I've focused on people and I have built people up.
And when the people around you are built up,
you'll naturally have a successfull business.
But the environment, it's absolutely key.
Most of us are like the rest of us.
I am very much like you, you are very much like me
you wouldn't want me to do something to you
you know, that you wouldn't have done to yourself.
You know, I think that's universal.
But in business, if the bottom line
the most important thing is the bottom line
and how much profit and money have we extracted from this sector,
if that's what it is, if that's the driving force,
then really it falls into the personality ethic,
really it falls into, "How can we manipulate people into getting things"?
But within the environment of my company, I employ about 90 people,
I would say to my staff, OK, here's the situation you've got
with a supplier or a customer,
If you were the supplier or the customer, what would you want to happen to you?
And I empower my staff to make those decisions.
And if the decision is, "We've really messed up on this one, Kev
we should give them their money back,"
my staff are empowered to do that, because that's the right thing.
So you can imagine my staff now, they're not fish out of water,
they're not in an environment where they think, "Oh, I am being forced,
I'm being pressured into making things and doing what the boss says,
I feel awkward going back to this customer or this supplier and saying,
they can't have this or they can't have that."
Is it any little wonder that in the UK- I believe it's worse in Serbia -
that the average person works for a company for 18 months
and then they go off trying to find something better?
In 14 years of running a company and having 90 people work for me
I can only remember four people leaving my employment.
It's because I give them that environment
where they feel as if what they are doing is right.
I give them that environment so they've got the ability to do to others
only what they would have done to themselves.
And does that make my company stand out?
Absolutely.
Does it make my company very different from the vast majority of the companies
in my same sector?
Absolutely.
And do you know what my customers say, now?
Do you know what my tradesmen that join us, say?
Do you know what our suppliers say? Do you know what?
"I can't believe that in this day and age there is still a company
that would have the ethics that this company has.
And is it any wonder today that even in recession in the UK
where companies haven't grown for two years,
that I am growing two and a half percent every month?
Is it a coincidence? Absolutely not.
Character ethic is so important.
Decide. Make a decision.
How you want to run your life, how you want to run your business.
Is this based on character, integrity, loyalty, friendship, gentleness
or are you going to change and be a lemming
and do what all of the new companies are doing in the world today?
And decide, no, I am going to manipulate people,
I am going to use Content Management Systems,
and I am going to use the software
to make out that my customer is important,
but really the bottom line is how much money I make.
I'd suggest, please, go for the character ethic.
Find out what your core values are.
If you don't know what your core values are,
how can you possibly even achieve them?
How can you set targets?
How do you know if you have achieved anything in life?
Go to that funeral.
Write those things down.
Build your expectations.
If you don't believe you can achieve something, you will never act upon it.
It's so simple.
Most people have no expectations or, if they have, it's really loose.
Really loose.
Someone might say, "Well I've started a business a few weeks ago,
and my expectations is that it would be successful",
or "that's what I am hoping for."
But really define what your expectations are.
They are like a magnet.
Get fotographs of what you want to achieve.
Put them on your walls, in your living room,
in your business, in your toilette,
in your kitchen.
We are all visual people.
If you can see what you want to achieve,
what your expectation is,
and if you see that every day, it's like a magnet, it will draw you.
And your actions will come from it.
And if you want something so bad,
never let it go and you'll probably get it.
Feed that hunger as much as you possibly can.
And create an environment people want to operate in.
Put yourself in their shoes.
How would you want to be employed?
How would you want to be a supplier or a customer?
Treat people the way you would want to.
If you catch this, it will revolutionize your life.
It has taken me in six years, from a 200,000 pound company,
to a 6.8 million company.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)