COVER STORY
around €750m. I am able to see my goals and fully accept them as real.” When Boylesports got going in the Republic around 1989,
people kept telling Boyle there was a recession on, but he was undeterred. “When you come from no work and no money you have
a diff erent attitude. As far as I could see at the time people were giving shops away and I couldn’t understand what was wrong with them. I was taking them of course and making them successful. Now I realise their state of mind was just bad,” he recalls. Boyle takes as many opportunities now as he can to talk to
young people in colleges – Ireland’s future entrepreneurs. “I tell them you don’t need money to start a business, just
a willingness to go with your passion. Nowadays, it’s similar to how it was for me in those early days. I remember on one occasion someone charged me £2,500 sterling for a shop and I made £7,000 sterling in three days. “People are giving away businesses because they’re afraid
they won’t be able to meet their commitments and hungry guys and gals coming out of college with the right attitude can make things happen. Anyone’s greatest asset is their own mind. “I was lucky because I didn’t have any money at the start.
T at meant there was no such thing as not being successful. My mind was locked into achieving and I believed I could do it.
“You should always look at the best in any fi eld and see
what they’re doing, whether it’s sport or business. Paddy Pow- er was the leader when I was starting out. I looked at why its shops were busy when others were very quiet. I realised that whatever they were doing was working and learned a lot from them. T is led to Boylesports carving a niche in the market for quality that Paddy Power wasn’t doing. We were able to own that niche and raise the bar in retail,” Boyle affi rms.
CUSTOMER-SERVICE QUALITY
High standards have always been important to Boyle and this fi lters down into the people he has working for him and the customer service provided in his shops. “I would never let myself off the hook and am fair but fi rm.
I feel being a leader of a company is no diff erent than being a teacher. I have a couple of hundred people expecting me to bring them up to a high standard. If I’m sloppy, they’re going to be sloppy. T e people working for Boylesports appreciate that if they do better, that means better wages and higher stan- dards mean better opportunities. “Training of people and instilling in everyone that the cus- tomer is king is vital. When we started out, the quality of the
16 OWNER MANAGER VOL 4 ISSUE 1 2011
‘THERE SEEMS TO BE SERIOUS POTENTIAL ONLINE – IT SEEMS TO BE VERY EASY TO ATTRACT 5,000 NEW CUSTOMERS A WEEK’
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