Managing Director of Pitman Training Mark Loosemore could have taken the obvious career route and gone into the family legal firm, but he chose the more precarious and ultimately more rewarding course of entrepreneur, with a few fascinating twists and turns along the way.
Why business and not law?
I was working as a lawyer in sport and although I loved it, I never saw myself as a partner in a law firm for thirty years. I did some great stuff: sponsorship work with Stefan Edberg, the FA, Euro 96 but law firms are quite restrictive places and I wanted a more commercial role. I was acting for the Welsh FA, negotiating with the WRU for use of the Millennium Stadium, I must have done something right as the WRU asked me to come over to them as Group Commercial Director.
That's quite a leap?
Yes, it was a very difficult period because I was inexperienced and they're a much better organisation now than they were then. It was a learning experience and in difficult situations you learn the most. At the time Graham Henry was coach and he said the problem with my role was I had all the responsibility but no authority.
Does your legal background help as an entrepreneur?
You have to be part lawyer, part accountant, part HR manager and part psychic! Yes, it has been useful – I know the legal position on most things and I'm a good negotiator – however, aside from law, I haven't had a huge amount of formal training but I've been very fortunate with the people I've worked with and because I'm willing to learn. If you're an entrepreneur and you think you know it all you're going to come a cropper.
How did you get from sport to Pitman Training?
I had the opportunity to buy a legal training business called Altior from my father. I thought there would be synergies between Altior and a more general training business, so I launched Pitman Training in Wales. As it turned out there weren't many synergies at all but after selling Altior in early 2008 it's become my main focus.
Even though you financed Pitman yourself, did you write and stick to a business plan?
I have a great deal of respect for anyone who can write and stick to anything more than a three year plan - it always takes longer and costs more than you think. You've got to be flexible and the most important part of any plan is cash-flow forecast – lack of cash is the main reason for businesses going bust.
So what's Pitman about?
We offer office skills courses including– secretarial, typing/keyboard skills, book-keeping and finance, legal, medical secretary and IT. It's all self paced, computer-based, you just slot the courses in around your life. We have advisors/supervisors whose first priority is to find out what our students' aims are – get a new job, change career, recover from redundancy, get promoted, retrain after maternity leave or simply improve their skills. Our advisors find out what students are trying to achieve. They'll then help guide them through all aspects of the relevant course so it's a very customer-service oriented way of learning.
How do students benefit?
They achieve their goals, feel more confident and improve their skills. In one recent case, we helped someone who'd been made redundant to successfully launch his own accounting business and that's not untypical. The measure of Pitman's impact is the number of referrals we get, the rapid growth in student numbers and the recent launch of our Swansea office which is doing extremely well.
Why business and not law?