QUIZZED by a listener to their Go Radio Business Show, Sir Tom Hunter and Lord Willie Haughey have spoken candidly about their own experiences of setting up in business – and what they wish they’d known when they were first starting out.
Sir Tom said: “I wish I knew it was going to be all right because when you start a business from nothing – and hopefully the listeners will get inspiration from this –you just don’t know day to day whether it is going to be all right. That insecurity is what drives you.
“There were times when I thought I’m not going to get through the day . . . if I’d just known, yes, it’s going be all right, that would have saved me a lot of worry.”
Lord Haughey confessed his biggest wish would be to have known that inspiring people rather than leading them would have led to success more quickly.
“It just came to me in the past few weeks that this was more important in business, “ he said. “My dad had a great saying: ‘If wisdom only came with youth.’ So I think the real answer would be, I wish I knew everything I know now back when I started – all the things I’ve learned.
“The number one thing I did learn is it doesn’t matter what business you’re in, it’s all about people. It’s not about the product. It’s not about what you’re trying to do. It’s all about how you get along with people, how you treat people, and more importantly, how you read people – that’s people who work for you and people you deal with.”
Asked by the show’s host, Donald Martin, editor of The Herald and Herald on Sunday at which point did the entrepreneurs realise they were good at their job but had to up their game, Sir Tom had two words: shell suit.
“For the first five years I was on my own, selling trainers out the back of a van,” he explained. “Seven years in somebody brought me this thing called the shell suit. I didn’t know what they were but shell suits changed my life because once we started selling them, I began to think this could actually be a big business!”
Lord Haughey also reminded Sir Tom: “True but your big break was when the shell suit became the national attire for the accused!”
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