How we built a business out of recession - chapter 33 - corporations are not for me
The story of CitNOW*
This is the 33rd chapter about CitNOW, the company started from a kitchen table in Winnersh, Berkshire. If you’d like to read from the beginning, here’s a link to chpt 1. Each chapter is a 5-minute read. It’s an early draft of a book.
CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although it was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company, and it has been sold again since.
I remember Jason** musing once about whether he’d done the right thing, introducing me to Alistair. I knew why he might have thought that, but it was nonsense, and I told him as much.
I’m laughing when I think about it now.
For some crazy reason, I’ve got Aliens - a fantastic sci-fi film in my head. Hopeless, defenceless humans, knowingly sent to a planet to recontact with a new alien species by the wicked Weyland-Yutani corporation - ruthless profit at any cost. Human loss? Expendable. The likely outcome for Ripley*** and her elite fighting unit, probably not great.
Of course, my problem was, thankfully, less life-threatening. If you’d asked me how I felt, I would have told you that, despite the bullshit, being partially responsible for running the company, seeing it grow, was exactly where I wanted to be. I had no desire to be working for someone else. I wasn’t powerless, and neither was Donna, a fundamental issue Alistair was having to come to terms with. I wanted to try to manage the situation because, after 5 years, probably longer, I was fully invested.
Also, I can’t emphasise this enough: Failure hurts. I started two businesses before CitNOW and failed both times, so I know how painful it can be to pick up the pieces. When it happens, there is no one to help cushion the fall. Get up, dust yourself down, and do something because mortgages and children wait for no one. Sometimes, that means returning to work for someone else, earning a monthly PAYE salary**** while you lick your wounds.
These experiences make you realise just how difficult it is for a start-up to succeed. So imagine how I’m feeling, and how Donna’s feeling especially, when we finally crack the UK market. We have a fully-fledged business.
Sales have never been better and are continuing to grow quickly. The company is also growing; it is no longer a tight knit group of ten people. We even have a big office to accommodate our staff and another one in Stirling. We can see, everyone can see. CitNOW is being written about - we attend conferences - buyers take our meetings - we now have a business that might just make it across the finish line.
It’s what I’d dreamed of, engrained from childhood when I had to listen to my mother screaming at my Dad. We were a shouty family. Her frustration boiling over in the kitchen, always after he returned from work, always bearing disappointing news.
He’d become a Unilever buyer by default; they bought the company. The first move to Walton-on-Thames was followed swiftly by a more significant one to the Wirral, working near Port Sunlight and the famous soap factory.
By the seventies, companies like Unilever were hiring educated newbies with degrees on promising fast track schemes. Time and experience in a job were only helpful up to a point - a couple of years, move on. If you didn’t, there was likely something wrong, and your future ascendance was no longer guaranteed. Those not advancing meteorically might like to consider their future.
For some reason, the kitchen rows stuck, especially the second one after he’d trained up his first new boss with the sociology degree. There’d been a promise made - just help him out Gordon, you’re next.
Well - how did it go?
There was already tension in the room, almost as if she were expecting the worst. He slowly removed his suit jacket. It looked tired and a bit shiny. It was overused.
They changed their mind.
What do you mean they changed their mind?
There wasn’t any real need to repeat what he’d said. But she did anyway. Treading her familiar path as she came to the boil, she was not quite ready to believe what she had already suspected and was now being confirmed by her weak, useless, accommodating husband.
What happened to the promise they made you?
How bloody stupid have you been this time?
As if he’d played his cards poorly at the final hurdle, a wrong answer in the all important meeting and the promotion vanishing as a consequence. She knew she only had herself to blame; after all, who chose Gordon?
We should never have left Byfleet in the first place, you stupid man. At least there, I didn’t have to put up with your bloody sanctimonious parents. Who's taken your job this time?
And with that, we were off to the races. I was sitting in my usual spot on the red vinyl kitchen bench, Formica table in front of me, back against the wall, a grandstand view as she screamed insults, and he, slower to rise, finally found his boiling point to vent his frustrations back.
Fighting is never pretty, and I didn’t like it. Occasionally, I tried to say something, but it was too late by then, and both snapped at me. At least they could agree on that.
I once had a meeting with Donna in Unilever’s Walton-on-Thames office. I had mixed emotions. The last time I’d been there was when I was five years old. Dad had brought his family in to see where he worked. As adults do, people made a fuss of me and my younger sister, and we got to see this light, spacious workspace, which became a Grade II listed building*****. Did we get some orange squash? Probably.
I also hadn’t forgotten those other early memories and how Unilever had treated my father - lying, conniving bullshitters.
I eventually found out for myself. McDonald's Blackpool, my first job after university, sacked me for stealing a rolled-up bunch of tenners from under my till. I was a trainee manager, and no, I didn’t steal their money.
I was a level one salesperson for Duracell. My 14-15 high street calls often started with an Asda at 08:00 am. Grade six was Sales Director, seven the CEO. They’d borrowed many of the management processes from Mars. Of 105 high street salespeople, only two were women, and there was a lot of testosterone-fuelled competition, which was encouraged. I loved the discipline at first - phoning in daily orders, processing the daily admin sat in my Vauxhall Cavalier in a car park in Llandudno, Stafford or Birkenhead.
A year later, it had become mind-numbingly dull. There was no chance of promotion and plenty of confirmation that I needed to do something else. I couldn’t see it happening in the corporate environment, where you followed the rules, remained positive, and had a well-honed political disposition.
I had enough confidence and self-belief not to stick around, although it took me a few more jobs before my first attempt at stardom.
*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.
** Jason is probably the most successful sales manager ever to use the original CitNOW Sales live service. He also introduced me to Alistair.
*** Ellen Louise Ripley is a fictional character and the original protagonist of the Alien film series, played by American actress Sigourney Weaver. Considered one of the greatest characters in science fiction film history.
**** Everyone was PAYE at CitNOW, but I had the bonus of share ownership.
***** Despite objections, listed building consent was eventually granted to demolish all buildings and replace them with nine residential blocks containing 375 apartments.