Tommo is my nickname, I inherited it at the age of 7 when I was first sent to a boarding school in the seaside town of Sidmouth, Devon, UK. The nickname itself is a stub of my surname and continues a long standing tradition amongst private schooling in England of referring to people by their surnames.
After leaving school at the age of 18, I worked for a small gift shop in Oxford, 1 day someone came in with an ancient 8086 IBM compatible Amstrad PC (this was 1993) and asked me if I could sell it in our store. I took his details, set up the computer on a spare display shelf we had and sold it about 20 minutes later for £300. It was my first sale at the company and it was my 3rd day. Needless to say I was quite pleased with myself and pestered my boss Duncan to allow me to sell some more.
He allowed me to place adverts on the university building notice-boards, informing impoverished students to "Make money from your old p.c.", the scheme didn't produce the enormous torrent of potential donors as I had expected and we ended up with 3 PCs. After testing they worked and that I could sell them, I wrote up a receipt to the students and promptly displayed their machines to our public. I didn't have the same success as my first sale and it took over a week to shift these ancient boxes, however we made money on every sale and Duncan had decided that the company should be in the PC business.
4 years later, we had established ourselves in new premises, become Oxfordshire's number 1 reseller (by revenue) of Sage accounting software, Apple computers and Novell Netware. We were firmly focussed on networking for businesses and had over 20 companies paying us a retainer for our outsourced IT support and services. At this time, Duncan had moved to our head offices to oversee the companies new school supply business and myself and 3 colleagues had developed our little start-up company into a turnover of £1 Million, with profits of roughly £200,000.
We were pleased and exhausted in equal measure. I don't think any of us had taken a holiday for 2 years. Needless to say "head office" wanted more from us as we were the only area of the business making money and our efforts were supporting everyone else's in the organisation. At a company meeting in September, my team of 4 were asked why we weren't making enough money and why our revenues weren't growing consistently from month to month. My 3 colleagues all looked at me (as I was always the most vocal) and I voiced out that we were making consistent increases to our profits and that decisions being made at head office to employ senior managers with senior manager salaries and car bonuses (none of which we, the 4 were getting!) were being subtracted from our revenue line and making us look bad. I also expressed my opinion that had Head Office been investing our profits back into the computer division, rather than the crowded and unprofitable "back to school" business, the company would be extremely cash rich and our fortunes would be a lot healthier.
Now please bear in mind reader that I was 23 when all this was happening, I had no business education, no degree and no formal sales training. I had spent the last 4 years working solidly, developing relationships with universities, local schools and businesses and had a lucrative pipeline of repeat and referral business from my contacts. Through my leadership and hard work and the support of my 3 colleagues, I had taken a gift shop with a turnover of £200,000 and profits of £40,000 into a successful million pound technology company.
My point here, I wasn't qualified to be making those statements to the board of directors, neither was I qualified to be asked the question in the first place. Had I not been so emotionally invested in my store, I wouldn't have taken their greedy and unappreciated demand for more capital so personally and I wouldn't have been so critical of their management (or lack thereof).
You can win the fight with your boss but you'll never win the war, that's why he's the boss. So it wasn't much of a surprise when they fired me. They did it very nicely if course, I was given the courtesy of a speech from the board and it was all "their fault", I remember Duncan saying to me "We just can't provide you with the level of stimulation you need, perhaps you'd be better at a bigger company".
I remember seeing his hands shaking and his lack of eye contact, how much his face was blushing and I remember thinking about picking holes in his arguments, but what was the point, I wasn't wanted anymore and they needed to pull the wool over their eyes. With me around, I was always going to keep them honest and that wasn't what they wanted. So I left without a fight.
They were awfully decent, they kept me on a salary for 6 months and paid into my pension, clearly my efforts were appreciated. But after 4 years of constant grind and 2 years with no holiday at all, I needed a break. So i took my 6 months salary and went to Newquay. I was only supposed to be there for 2 weeks, 6 months later I was still there and having the time of my life. My uncle Gerry and my Aunt Margaret were stars and not once did they complain about housing me. I owe those 2 people so much, but that dear reader, is another chapter I'll write another day.
Good tie!