LEE BOWN has built a recruitment business turning over more than £3m a year but he got his first taste of making money at the age of 13 when he helped out on a market stall selling clothes at weekends.
Bown did not have an easy childhood. While he was growing up in Nottingham, his mother developed multiple sclerosis and when he was 11 his father left the family. Bown’s wheelchair-bound mother had to raise him and a younger brother alone.
“Initially it was difficult because I got a lot of stick at school,” he said. “In the early days it made me go into myself a bit, but you can look at things in one of two ways. You can just accept it, or it makes you determined to prove people wrong. It gave me the stubbornness and the drive to want to succeed at anything.”
Bown left school at 16 and got a Youth Training Scheme apprenticeship in a factory that made furniture, where he stayed for nine years. “We would start work when the buzzer sounded and have lunch when the buzzer sounded,” he said. “In the early days I didn’t know any better but it became really frustrating. The guys working there had no life. They had just enough money to get by on. I became more and more determined that I didn’t want to be in that situation. There was no ambition there and I absolutely hated it.”
At 25 the direction of Bown’s life changed when he tore his cruciate ligament playing football and was unable to work for three months. Stuck at home with nothing to do, he started drawing portraits of his friends and family. Enthused by their response and thinking he could turn his talent into a business, Bown asked the bank for a loan to rent a studio. It was not to be, though. “I knew nothing about business and the bank laughed at me,” he said.
Realising he needed to earn some money to pay for the studio, Bown started doing sales jobs, selling perfume and kitchens door to door. Then he got a job with a recruitment company and the portrait idea was abandoned.
He quickly realised he loved working in recruitment, not least because he was at last earning good money, and he did well at it, helped by the fact that he was initially placing employees in factories. “I really enjoyed it and because I came from that background I found it easy to communicate with them,” he said.
After 18 months Bown moved on to work for another recruitment company but after four years there he realised he wasn’t going to advance farther, so in 2004 he left to start up on his own. “I thought, right, I am going to do this for myself,” he said.
By now 32 and with £3,000 of savings, Bown started the business from his kitchen table, specialising in technical and engineering recruitment. However, he was reluctant to abandon completely his love of art, so he also started a portraits business, assembling a group of local artists to produce pictures of football players, which he sold through club shops. The combined businesses were called Recart, an amalgam of recruitment and art.
“Because I had no experience of setting up a business everybody thought I was a bit mad. People told me I should get a proper job,” said Bown. “But I thought, I am out of the factory and the world is my oyster — I want to do everything I possibly can.”
After six months it became clear that the recruitment part of the business was taking off strongly, so he focused his energies on that and once again the art was put to one side. “I enjoyed both but I knew that recruitment was going to earn me a better living,” he said.
Bown soon moved from the kitchen table into shared offices and then took on an employee to help him. Today the business has 14 employees and is expected to have a turnover of £3.1m this year.
He has also managed to get some art back into his life, recently launching a business called Red Cloud Photography Days, which offers experience days to teach people how to use their digital cameras.
Now 37 and getting married next month, Bown puts his success down to his optimistic outlook. “I always look on the bright side of everything I do and will always try to see the positives and the benefits of every situation. I worked in a factory for nine years and I am not working in a factory now and I have got my health, and with those two things I think you can do anything.
“If I want to do something, I will always look at the ways I can do it. I won’t look at the ways in which a venture could fail. If you are going to succeed, you have to concentrate on success and have a completely focused mind.”
Bown has this advice for budding entrepreneurs: “Listen to people who have been successful. When you are starting out there are so many people who want to give you advice but don’t have a business of their own. Listen instead to the people who have been there and done it. Always have a mentor and be determined and focused but also keep a smile on your face and enjoy it, because it’s fun.”
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