14 entrepreneurs
Onwards and upwards for the humble entrepreneur serving up a slice of success
As CEO and founder of Slough-based Goldteam Recruitment, Naveed Ahmed has gone from college dropout and pizza delivery driver to an award-winning businessman. Having started his business after being made redundant in 2002, it took over a year of hard graft, whilst also working weekends in a furniture store, before he won his first client. Today, aged 40, he puts family values, ethics and innovation at the heart of the company, is passionate about giving back to the community and is constantly on the lookout for new opportunities and ideas. Alison Dewar finds out more
Born and raised in Lahore, Pakistan to a Swiss mother and Pakistani father, Ahmed was just 15 when the family returned to England, where his parents had initially met and married. They settled in Slough, Berkshire, where he went to school, something he describes as a “culture shock”, and then on to college, before dropping out and taking on a role of delivering pizzas on a moped. Unfulfilled and unchallenged, he tried his hand at various other roles before finding his niche in the electronics sector, working for blue chip names such as Panasonic, Racal and Alcatel. His experiences as a contractor made him realise there was both a need and opportunity in the recruitment marketplace and in 2002, he set up Goldteam Recruitment, which today is one of the leading suppliers of temporary, contract and permanent staff, boasting a turnover in excess of £10 million. One of nine siblings, Ahmed is married to Sonia and the couple has four children, the youngest of whom was born last August. Staying close to his roots and his business, they live in Burnham, near his teenage home.
defunct MFI furniture chain, where I studied for my City and Guilds qualification in CAD planning and was designing customers’ kitchens and bedrooms as well as working in sales. It was the first place I had good exposure to dealing with people from all walks of life, and that created a basis on which I would build later on.
I then went to Racal Instruments; I’d always been good with my hands and enjoyed the challenge of working in an electronics environment. Racal led me to Panasonic and eventually to Alcatel, where I worked first as a contractor and was then promoted to a permanent position. Following the tragedy of 9/11, Alcatel was forced to make over 600 redundancies, including me. My redundancy was ultimately a blessing in disguise, as it was inevitably the catalyst for starting my own business.
You talk about the culture shock of going to school in England, what was so different?
In Pakistan, it was normal for teachers to use the cane if you misbehaved, but here all the teachers gave you was 15 minutes’ detention. I had been studying for my GCSEs when we left and I had a teacher who thought every bit of sunlight was time for study, so an extra 15 minutes on the end of a day was nothing to me, not to mention the missing cane. When I started at school I was a year behind due to the lack of English language skills, but once I had grasped it, I was ahead of the class and lessons became a bit boring.
What happened next?
I went to college to do a foundation course in engineering but I had a busy brain, a short attention span and was easily distracted – I ended up in trouble a few times so I quit and went to work for Domino’s Pizza as a part-time delivery driver. By the time I moved on nine months later, I had already been promoted to assistant manager of the Slough branch. From there I went to the now
www.businessmag.co.uk Why recruitment?
Well, amongst other things, I liked the idea of wearing a suit to work and missed my MFI days of doing the same! When I was a contractor, I worked with recruitment agencies as a candidate so I knew how they worked, plus I had already had a flavour of the benefits the sector could deliver, as I had employed other contractors during my time at Alcatel. I had identified the needs of candidates and the desires of clients and wanted to put my knowledge to use.
How did you get started?
I rented a small office in Hayes and for the first nine or 10 months I was making hundreds of calls without picking up a shred of business. Persistence was key and my very first breakthrough was when I finally connected with the executive housekeeper at what was then Le Meridien Hotel near Heathrow. At the time, it was the largest airport hotel in the country and we made an agreement to supply five chambermaids on a daily basis. This was just the beginning, our turnover in 2003 was £16,000 but we finished 2004 with a turnover of £786,000.
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – FEBRUARY 2015
How did you pay the bills in the meantime?
MFI became my “go to” place for part-time work and to earn a living. I’d be in the Goldteam office five days a week and then every Saturday and Sunday I worked in MFI designing and selling more kitchens and bedrooms. By this time, I was married, and my wife worked as a pharmaceutical representative, so we had her salary coming in too which was very helpful.
What’s the secret of your success?
It is a crowded market, there are at least 14,000 recruitment agencies and competition is tough as customers expect much more value-added services now. To give you an example, in the food sector, where we do a lot of work, there are plenty of red tape and compliance issues – clients
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