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Speak Like a CEO
This chapter describes ten helpful actions and behaviors that will bring you...
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Me And My Partner: IAIN DALE AND JOHN SIMMONS
Independent, The (London), Jun 6, 2001 by Interviews by Alice Woolley
Iain Dale: I started getting interested in politics when I was about 12, thanks to my grandmother, who used to talk to me about it all the time. She was on the right. I remember her bursting into tears of joy when I told her Margaret Thatcher had been elected leader of the Conservative Party. She indoctrinated me and it worked. When I was in the 6th form at Saffron Walden comprehensive, we had a mock election in 1979 and I stood as the Conservative candidate, and won with a 30 per cent majority.
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My parents would have loved me to take over the family farm in Saffron Walden, but I thought I'd be a German teacher, so I went to Norwich University to read German, but I got involved in politics and that was that. At the time Norwich University was left-wing. There was no Conservative Association. In my first year the Falklands War started and I went to a debate between Mark Seddon, who was president of the students' union and now edits Tribune, and someone on the far left. And I couldn't understand why there was no one representing a Conservative viewpoint. So a friend and I put up a stand at the next freshers' fair and we were deluged with people.
After I left university I went to work for Patrick Thompson MP as a researcher for a couple of years. Then in 1987, I got a job as public affairs manager for the British Ports' Federation. My main task was to persuade the government to get rid of the dock labour scheme. This was 1940s legislation that basically gave dockers a job for life. The Thatcher government announced its abolition in 1989. I'd done myself out of a job and they paid me off.
I joined Charles Barker as a lobbyist, but I had nothing to do so I ended up as a journalist on Lloyd's List for a year. Then my former boss at the ports industry, Nicholas Finney, wanted to form a lobbying consultancy to specialise in transport. We had the Waterfront Partnership, which is still going. We grew the business and had one or two offshoots including a conference company, which I ran. It was successful.
I was happy doing that but in 1996 we had a disagreement over the future of the company and the staffing, and I left. He wanted to expand quickly and brought somebody into the company with whom I could not work. They bought my share of the company. It was painful, very emotional.
I'd been earning a lot of money. I had a Docklands penthouse flat, an Audi cabriolet, and a nice life, and suddenly it was gone. I'd had the idea for Politico's for a couple of years. I'd seen something similar in Washington and I'd always thought most bookshops here were terrible at selling political books. I was a frustrated customer. I liked the idea of combining a bookshop with a cafe. I'd become friends with John over a year. We are opposites and we have little in common in many ways. Although his interest in politics was zero, he wanted to be involved.
I knew nothing about bookselling or retailing. I wrote to 100 publishers and had replies from 10 of them. But the business plan was exhaustive. The bank liked it, and we got started with pounds 100,000, made up of personal money, a bank loan and small investments from family and friends.
We found this property in Artillery Row, not far from Parliament, and we opened on 18 February 1997, six weeks before the election. We got good media coverage - we even appeared on News at Ten. We hit the ground running. In 1998 we decided to start publishing books, though it hadn't been part of the original plan. We found we'd get 40 or 50 customers asking for the same book, which was out of print. The publishers couldn't seem to get their act together.
We published four or five books. Then I had a phone call from the former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe, who wanted to publish his memoirs. And that was our big break because he hadn't said a word in public since his trial in 1979. We thought we'd publish three or four books a year, but in 1999 we published 20 and this year it'll be 35. We're doing the biography of Cherie Blair in September.
The publishing business works because our brand is strong, and we're going to build on that when we launch our web design company after the election. MPs' websites are awful, often because the people who design them are doing it free, or they are specialist design companies who have no political experience. We already have good clients signed up.
I felt from the start that John and I made a good team. He's sensible and stops me doing things I might regret. I will come up with 10 brilliant ideas and he will look at them, and question them, and we find only one is a brilliant idea. It's important to have someone around who can tell me I'm being a fool. Because sometimes I am.
I'm temperamental. So many people have said I'm difficult to work with that I'm beginning to believe it. I keep saying to myself: right, today I'm going to be sweetness and light all day. But it doesn't work. I tend to vent my feelings over staff incompetence, and John will smooth the feathers I've ruffled. I don't have tantrums with John. I get on the phone and have a rant over a late delivery, but he will be polite and helpful.
