STEVE MATTHEWS INTERVIEWS GAVIN BRADBURY

Welcome to another Up Close & Personal for our monthly look into the life of an entrepreneur as part of our Renegade Magazine and Podcast. Today I have with me another great friend of mine! I think I’ve introduced every one of my interviews that way as I’m blessed to have such a close group of friends that happen to be extraordinary business owners. This gentleman is no exception to that. I met Gavin just a little over 12 months ago when we joined a Mastermind Group run by Dave Dean. His legendary passion sees him light up the room in a shade of purple as he gets more and more engaged in a session. His willingness to help and support others is inspiring and he’s a pretty good entrepreneur to boot. I won’t steal too much of his thunder but his work ethic, his relentless drive to perfect his social media presence and direct response marketing techniques is quite frankly humbling for a novice like myself. So, without further ado, I’m proud to introduce the master of mutton, the prince of pork, the squire of steak … Gavin Bradbury! How are you Gav? How’s things?

GB: Hello Steve, I’m ne. That’s an introduction and a half isn’t it!

SM: I had to think about that one to be fair, whilst we’re sitting here amongst all these pies and pastries, it’s not good for a horizontally challenged man like myself.

GB: It ruins your waistline… absolutely!

SM: Apparently, I’ve got an eating disorder, in the fact that I can’t pass a chip shop… And I’ve got 2 hands and 1 mouth. So, we’ll have to help ourselves later! Gav, tell us how we’ve come to sit in this bustling town centre shop. I believe it started from very humble beginnings as a Saturday job for a 14 year old. Is that right?

GB: Yeah, that’s right! I was at school doing my GCSE’s, doing my A Levels and all my mates played football and other things that I wasn’t really interested in. I played a bit of sport myself but got an opportunity to earn a bit of money. I was big into my music when I was younger and couldn’t afford to buy what I wanted, when I wanted, so when a new single come out I wanted a way to have the things that I wanted. So, I got myself a little Saturday job in a butcher’s shop, working 4 or 5 hours in an afternoon, just cleaning up and that then became all day on a Saturday; purely and simply because on a Saturday morning the boss gave everybody a free sausage and bacon roll for their breakfast and I wanted in on that. So, to get in on that, you had to start at 5 in the morning, so there I was starting at 5, a bit like yourself Steve, led by my stomach.

SM: The things we do for a sausage sandwich!

GB: And then from there I did a Friday night and a Saturday… and then I did a Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday and progressed to eventually, by the time that I was studying my A Levels, I was going to work at 5 in the morning, working until 8:30, going to school from 8:45 to 3 and then 3:30 until 6 I was back in the shop. I was doing that Monday to Friday, I was doing 12 hours on a Saturday and I was working on a Sunday as well.

SM: That’s a lot of records you can buy with that money.

GB: It’s a lot of records, yeah. If only I had kept my old records, I’d have probably been alright. It did allow me at the age of 19 to pass my driving test, funded by myself and then I did what everybody else does at the age of 19, I went and bought a house.

SM: I thought you were going to say a fast car then!

GB: No, I went and bought my rst house, so that was good! I initially didn’t want to be in the meat industry at all, I had no real desire to. Originally the plan was to go to medical school. I had a provisional place at Queens when I was doing my A Levels, to study surgical medicine at Queens in Nottingham. I even did a 2-week taster there and then after being in the shop for a long time, I just enjoyed what I did. I enjoyed the people, I enjoyed the work, everything about it really. The opportunity came up, there was a job vacancy and I just decided I wanted it. The pay wasn’t great but I loved what I did, so that made up for it.

SM: To be fair, you kind of breezed over that then but let’s just take that back one second shall we. First of all, it’s clear to everybody, the drive that you have as a 19-year-old… Straight away, you’re going into full time work and you’re buying a house, so you’re not doing things by halves, but this thing that always makes me smile when I hear it… You had a provisional place in Queens to be a surgeon, no wonder you’re such a good butcher really!

GB: The way I look it, it’s kind of the same thing with less consequences because they’re already dead!

SM: So even though you were working so hard in the shop, you obviously did quite well in school?

GB: Yeah, I did! I qualified with 16 GSE’s at A-C, I studied chemistry, biology, geography, general social studies. Passed the chemistry, geography and the social studies with 2 A’s and a B and never finished the biology, I was predicted an A in Biology and then 6 weeks before my final exam, I dropped out of school.

SM: You dropped out to go to work?

GB: I dropped out to go to work, I was due to hand in my final dissertation for my A level and one morning I just put my tie on, worked in the shop and never went back to school until I went back to hand over my piece of paper to say that I was officially leaving… And the rest is history!

SM: That must have gone down well with Mum and Dad?

GB: Well, to be honest with you, my parents separated when I was 10 and I think part of my drive when I was younger, came from seeing my Mum always struggle to pay the bills, to keep a roof over our head. By the time I was 21 I’d lived in 24 different houses, my Dad was fantastic at not keeping a job. He was very good at that, and I think maybe that’s why I bought that house so early, because of the lack of stability. I wanted to do something that moved me away from that and set me on a different course to what I’d grown up in and around. It’s one of those things where, you make a decision and you don’t always realise why you made that decision at that time. I think I did a lot of it subconsciously and that put me on the path that I was on. And then from working in the shop, I moved forward there. Then my partner at the time and I had a baby. So just shy of 20, I had my first house, my first child and life was very, very busy! Again, when that happened, that was another indicator, I saw that as an opportunity to produce a life for my children that I hadn’t had.

SM: You’ve got to grow up pretty quickly then, haven’t you!

GB: Yeah, you have. All my mates were out Friday, Saturday and Sunday drinking, staying in bed all day and having factory jobs where they were earning a lot more money than me. When I first started in the Butcher’s the minimum wage was £6.50 an hour and I was earning £1.87.

SM: £1.87 an hour? About $2.50 an hour?

GB: Turns out my boss didn’t believe in hourly rate. He knew that if he threw more work at you, you’d have to get it done before you went home and that was it, so you got paid a set amount for what you did each week and I just did that. It started off, I used to have a day off and then one of the guys I worked with never used to turn in on my day off so I used to go in to cover that and then I spent the next 15 years working 6 or 7 days a week.

SM: So you went through all that, how did it come about that you actually now own this place? You went from Saturday boy to working all God’s hours, 6 or 7 days a week, how did the opportunity come to own the place that you used to work on a Saturday?

GB: Ahhh… Sausage rolls really! My boss used to charge me for every single one and I was fed up of paying for them. For those that haven’t seen me, I’m not the size of a house.

SM: No, you’re definitely not!

GB: I could see the lifestyle that I was working to give somebody else… the perceived lifestyle, and something clicked one day. It was at Christmas, when generally we start work on the 22nd and I don’t go home until about 7pm Christmas Eve. Straight through, it’s just so busy. Unfortunately, it’s one of the dark sides of being good at what you do, being popular at what you do and also having to balance the books. In our industry, it’s the 2 weeks of the year where we make all our money, so you have to be there and do what you do to make it. I just thought to myself, honestly, I could do this and I could do it for the family. So, I said to my boss, what’s it going to cost me to get rid of you, and he sort of laughed at me and said, “I don’t know, throw a figure at me”. Well, having never seen the books and knowing he had a nice house not too far away as well, I offered him a million pounds for the business and his house.

SM: You didn’t just want his business, you wanted his house as well! I’m surprised you didn’t offer him something for his family!

GB: So, here I was a cheeky 23-year-old, offering my boss a chance to retire 3 years early with a million pound cash and all he had to do is move out of his house and give me his business. That sounded simple to me when I was 23, you know, the world’s not such a hard place.

SM: I bet it did!

GB: Obviously it didn’t quite pan out like that but we had a serious conversation about it over the next few months, he gave me a figure and he said, “if you can raise the cash, I’ll go”. I then spent a few months trying to raise the capital and then, just before my 25th birthday, I went to him and said, “I’ve got the money, when are you going”? He looked at me and said, “you’re joking”, I said “I’m not joking, here’s a provisional offer, here’s the money, when are you going”? So, we then spent the next 3 months sorting everything and on 1st November, he retired and I took the business on.

SM: How long ago was that?

GB: It was 2009, 8 years ago…

Listen to the rest of the interview at 729Renegades.com/podcast