Live 24-Seven - Spotlight On Business
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given? Do the right thing. It might not be in your best interest at that point in time, but there’s no point leading someone up the garden path as at some point they’ll respect you for it and will want to come back and deal with you again.
Whilst property is business for you, is there any room for emotion in a deal? Buying a home is an emotional decision, but business property is more instinctive than emotional. You can chuck spreadsheets, formulas, run rates and returns at something, but you can smell a good deal, it’s instinctive. After our meeting I’m heading to Walsall to look at a potential acquisition at £7.7m. Within 30 seconds of driving down the street and viewing the properties I’ll know if I want to do it.
You’ve held some prestigious public offices, are there any others in the pipeline? I’ve been privileged and honoured to have held the role of High Sheriff of the West Midlands and President of The Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. I don’t presently have any aspirations for other public roles, but continue to be flattered by regular approaches. My focus really is my business and the Bond Wolfe Charitable Trust, which was set up to support local worthy causes and it’s our way of practising what we preach.
How do you spend your free time, if you have any? I’m lucky to have three homes in Marbella, the Midlands and Windsor and enjoy spending time at them all. I’m very fit, I walk and run, I like playing racquetball, tennis and keep fit with my pal Tiger and I’m also a compulsive reader and find it therapeutic. Spending time with family and friends is very important. My priority is to watch my children and nephews develop, they have all done fantastically well and I’m very proud of them and their work ethic and integrity. My real ambition is to see them all fulfil their potential and watch them grow, marry and have families of their own. My eldest nephew is working hard at CPBigwood, he loves his job and does very well. He recently got married and his wife Karen has been a great addition to the family. They had their first child and the first child of the next Bassi generation – young Dylan (Smiler) – who has bought a lot of joy to the family.
So what’s next? We have a trust, but my next project is the charity shops. I’m going to start opening up shops on High Streets because I can buy the shops, so that’s an advantage, and know many people who would donate products, for example, one of our tenants rang me up and said, “Paul we’ve got 200 tracksuits, they’re last year’s design, would you like them for one of your charities?” We get furniture out of redundant buildings, friends who are in textiles and have made too many of a product offer them to me, and if I were to write to the many people we deal with and ask them to send their surplus stock they would do so. So I buy the buildings, (so there’s no outgoings), we fill them with stock that’s been donated and raise money for charities. I’m not very social media friendly, but I go on Twitter and it’s amazing how you pick up problem stories. In fact another true story, I was driving along and heard the word Priya on the radio, so listened up as that’s my wife’s name, and it was a young girl, eight or nine years old and she had a very rare form of cancer. They’d raised the money for the treatment in America, but of course a young girl can’t go without mum and dad, so we sorted mum and dad. So the charity shop is the pet project, but the business is doing really well, the results come out next week, they’re very good, but nowhere near where I know we’re heading. My DNA likes to make money.
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