Linda Walmsley is a professional interviewer and business owner of a UK executive and management recruitment firm, Walmsley Wilkinson. During 2024 she continues a series of interviews with Business Leaders who have innovated within their field of expertise and have warranted the description of being an inspiring leader.
Profile
John is an entrepreneur, businessman, investor and passionate philanthropist. He founded online electrical retailer AO.com in 2000 following a £1 bet with his friend that he couldn’t change the face of the white goods market. Over twenty years later, with the industry changed, it has proven to be a valuable bet. AO is now the UK’s most trusted electricals retailer, employing around 3,000 people across the UK. AO also owns one of Europe’s most advanced electricals recycling plants, a nationwide best-in-class logistics company and is the largest online mobile phone retailer in the UK. John is also a long-standing campaigner of and champion for the development of opportunities for young people through the establishment of a Youth Infrastructure Fund, an innovative proposal to restore the £1bn p.a. of lost government funding back to youth services alongside philanthropic match-funding. John has previously been a Trustee and Chair of the Executive Board of OnSide Youth Zones, a charity that is transforming youth provision in the UK by giving young people safe, affordable and inspiring places to go in their leisure time. He remains closely involved with the charity.
Twitter handle @johnrobertsAO
Interview
What were your career aspirations when you were younger?
I wasn’t very good at school, is probably the nicest way to put it. I’ve never been tested but I’m convinced that I’m dyslexic, I always found reading very difficult and I still find reading difficult. I’m very slow at it. It’s a standing joke with Sally, my wife because she reads very quickly. I was saying to her the other day, that I was going on the exercise bike, and that I was going to kill two birds with one stone with some pre-reading for work. She asked how long I was going on the bike for, 3 hours?! Therefore, when I was younger, I struggled academically so that dramatically limited my options. I only got one acceptance which was for Newcastle Polytechnic. Aspirationally, I didn’t really have a further education focus, but I loved work and always had. I was entrepreneurial from a very early age. For example, buying misshapen gingerbread men from Warburtons’ staff shop and then selling them in school. I was forever getting in trouble for selling different things in school and even got suspended at one point. Traditionally, I had a paper round, but I actually delivered two different papers on the same round and got paid for both. My first proper job was working in hospitality at The Last Drop Hotel. Sally and I met and got married there. Sub-consciously, I learned so much there that we still apply in the business now and have done over the past 24 years, particularly, how we think about customer service. Probably the defining lesson was that, at the time being paid £0.90 per hour there, all your money came via tips. The concept of a tip in Bolton is very different to that in Boston, USA. People in the UK don’t feel an obligation to leave a tip, and they certainly didn’t then. You have to inspire somebody to tip you. There was a guy called Richard Thompson who worked at The Last Drop. He taught me that people think they are coming out for a meal but they’re not; it’s a night out or an experience. So, 90% of the job is actually just turning up, looking smart, having a clean uniform on and putting a smile on your face. It’s incredible to me how many people don’t get past that hurdle. They’re late, or their scruffy, not smiling, their uniform is dirty, and they don’t take pride in step one. Step two, is just to be really nice, thoughtful and engaging. You’ve got to be a chameleon in that situation. For one customer it’s ‘good evening, sir and then they want smoke blowing up their arse! Equally, there might be a young couple with a baby in a pram so mashing some carrots up or warming some milk up or just pushing the pram around the restaurant for five minutes so they can some peace is their moment of value and that will make a difference to them. What I soon found was it made both their and my evening more enjoyable, more fulfilling, and rewarding. In a microcosm, culturally that’s what we try to create at AO and that was culturally ingrained in me from an early age. After coming out of education I worked for a kitchen and bathroom distributor. My options were limited but I experienced the same thing where people would arrive at the last minute, because they don’t get paid before that minute, and it was more about what they could get away with not doing rather than what they could do. It was just so easy to be better and why not turn up early? I talk about these concepts to my kids all the time; your opportunity cost of time which no-one thinks about is zero, then they go what do you mean? I say, ‘well what else are you doing? 15 minutes more in bed. So, get up and get there 15 minutes earlier. Being on time is being late. Being on time is being early and being ready to go from minute one. Stay until the job is done. Little simple stuff. I’ve just always had an incredible work ethic because I enjoyed working, whatever the job. We talk about that in AO, namely being a high performance culture. We have people here that enjoy working hard and I want you to work hard. Others look at you like you’re some kind of draconian Lancashire mill owner, but I think working hard is more fun, you get much more out of it.
Who or what, has inspired you in your life and career?
Lots of people in lots of ways. I’ve always tried to learn something from everyone and to learn what not to do as much as what to do. Don’t try and be someone you’re not. Better to be a poor version of you than a copy of someone else, but why not be a good version of you? I’m a good mimicker in terms of I like the way they did that so I’m going to adopt that, or I really didn’t like the way they did that so I’m going to consciously make sure I don’t do that. I’ve always been obsessive about personal development. I listen to podcasts, audio books and different series. I love learning about how people do things, why they do things the way they do them. I make huge efforts to meet new and interesting people, I’ll happily go on long haul flights to meet them, and so I’ve always done that. It’s hard to pick out one standalone person. I’ve never met anyone like Elon Musk, but I find what he’s achieved inspirational. I never want to be him either. There was a guy called Peter Hopkinson, whose son is an investor in AO and sits on our board. His father had the business where I had my first job working in a warehouse. Peter was an orphan in Newcastle, I think he had one kidney, he smoked about 60 cigarettes a day, he was digging roads in Newcastle with no qualifications, so his life chances were pretty poor. However, through grit, spit, determination and his refusal to fail, he built PJH – biggest bathroom and kitchen distributor in the UK, all from selling stainless steel sinks from the back of his car. If he can do that, anyone can do anything. So, if I had to pick one person out, as an inspiration, it would be him but there’s hundreds of people who have helped and inspired me.
What life lessons would you share with others?
If you believe you can, you can. There’s always a way even if it’s not always immediately obvious. Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard. That’s on the top of our blackboard at home. Sally drives that into our kids all the time. Some people have incredible talent or incredible intelligence and then you’ve got other people who work incredibly hard. Roger Federer is an example of someone who has incredible talent and works incredibly hard. I’d recommend watching his address at Dartmouth. I use him as the example of someone with grace and style who makes his job look incredibly easy but he’s the epitome of the harder you work the luckier you get. In his total career he only won 54% of all the points he played but he won the right points. There’ll be loads of people who have that talent but gave up or didn’t have it in them. Working hard, having the right attitude, the right commitment, the right dedication and relentlessness, is more valuable than the talent in most situations. From 2008 to 2014 there weren’t that many IPO’s. What I knew was that I was playing a game that I didn’t understand against people who did. Be they Bankers or Advisors who not only knew the rules, but they also probably invented them and played them every day. I felt at a distinct disadvantage because I didn’t know what I didn’t know and only had one chance to find out before it was too late. I call this conscious incompetence, so I wrote a list of all the companies that had done an IPO from 2008 – 2014 and basically, I wrote to them saying “look, I’m a lad from Bolton that sells washing machines and I know I’m going to get screwed but I don’t know how or when, would you mind giving me an hour to share some of your experiences on the journey you went on in your IPO, good and bad, who you trusted and what you learned?” Everyone I asked said yes. I often say that if you ask nicely and you ask well, most people will say yes – not everyone, but most. I get requests to do things, but I just look at it, and I normally don’t reply as the requests are so crap, so asking well and putting some thought into the request is important. Think about how you are going to make yourself stand out. Too many people don’t think about it, they don’t put the preparation into it.
What five words best describe you?
There’s a Johari Window technique which I did about two years ago with a group of friends. You write down the five words that you think describe you and everybody else writes down five that they think describe you and then you stick them on a board and try to find your blind spots. So, mine would be honest and loyal. The next one depends on what side of the table you’re sat on, I would say relentless, but having done that exercise, the words that came back were exhausting, fun and generous. I’m either full on or full off and it’s mainly full on. What I tend to do is run full on until I’m exhausted and then have a break.
Do you have a favourite saying or quote?
I think that depends. I’ve got hundreds. “Chop, chop” will be one of my favourites. That influences loads of stuff. I love walking behind people in the building. I think you can measure productivity of a business by how fast people walk around the building. So, if I’m walking behind someone, I am known to say, “chop, chop, let’s get on with it”. And “if you think you can, you can”. Find the reason why, not the reason why not, in everything, look for the positives, they’re always there – even in bad situations there’s positives.
Is there a particular technology you are passionate about?
The internet. It’s been quite kind to us at AO! One of my big passions is social mobility and I think the internet goes a long way to levelling that playing field. People learn in different ways and the education system is often teaching them skills for jobs that potentially won’t exist when they leave it. However, the internet is an incredible resource. One of my sons taught himself to play the guitar via YouTube. If you didn’t have the money to pay a guitar teacher, you can still educate yourself. If I think about the privileged world of many of our politicians for example. The majority of them originate from a very privileged background regardless of the political party they belong to. If I think about the top universities and boarding schools, that type of education was very tightly held, a private club and the best jobs in banking, went to their kids and that was how it worked. The ability to break into that was very limited. The internet has changed a lot of that. One of the things we say at AO is that we’ll teach you nothing, but you’ll learn loads. We have a large amount of people that we’ve paid to go through accountancy courses or have gone from customer service roles into a tech roles. We want to recruit the right people with the right DNA, the right cultural fit, the right work ethic and then they can go and be whatever they want to be. When I do spend time in youth clubs, doing talks to people, I often say that “if you’ve got a smartphone, don’t tell me what’s stacked against you, you can achieve.” The biggest problem that kids from disadvantaged backgrounds have, is that they spend their lives being told what’s not for them. Culturally as a nation, unfortunately we’re not aspirational – the opposite of the US. When people are successful in the UK and they drive down the road in their Ferrari, people shout “wanker”. If somebody starts a business, everything is stacked against them. If it fails, we don’t say “don’t worry you tried, give it another go”. No, people say, told you you’d fail, who did you think you were? We shame people that fail when actually they’ve probably learned loads. I was in San Francisco recently with a great guy called Michael Moritz, who is a founder of Sequoia Capita and someone who’s incredibly generous with his time especially because he isn’t an investor in AO. I just wrote to him saying when I’m in town can I pop in. He was in a particularly good frame of mind, so I said, ‘you’re chirpy today’. He responded by saying that they had just had an exit with a business they supported and done well from it. He explained more and what was amazing was that it was the seventh time Mike had invested in this person and business. His other six investments had failed. After three failed investments, what makes you think that the fourth is going to be successful? The sixth – what made you back him for the seventh? He said the person was just so passionate, full of energy, he was always going to find something that worked. He’d been knocked down six times but was back again for another try. How could you not back him. Imagine if Sequoia had walked away at the 6th and not stayed with the guy for the 7th successful attempt! Has the guy got integrity, has he still got the energy and passion, was he honest with me, did he keep me up to date? These are the important things. Sequoia would have backed him the 8th and 9th time as the guy had it in him to succeed. Eventually he will make a success of it. In the UK we are the complete reverse of that.
How should the Human Resources function operate within any business?
HR should create the environment for success. We believe in principles not prescriptions, we believe in empowerment. We know people will make mistakes we only have one rule: tell someone fast. I try to meet all new starters within their first month to explain how we operate. When I ask them, what they do when they make a mistake, they answer, we learn from it – yes fair enough, but immediately what do you do? “Own up”. I hate that language though as it suggests you did something wrong. You didn’t do anything wrong, as long as you did it with the right intent. It just went wrong, so tell someone, tell your boss. If you tell someone immediately, what you do is, you build trust through moments that matter, through time and experience we build trust. Who do you trust most in the world? People tend to trust people who they’ve known for a very long time, the trust has taken years and years to gain. You only have a small amount of time with people at work so the power of telling somebody you just made a mistake, as a trust builder, is incredible.
What are your views on attracting talent and retaining people?
It’s a bit cliché, but we try to recruit more on DNA and don’t try to be everything to everyone. We want to not be right for some people. When I meet people on my welcome to AO sessions, I’m always very clear with them that at the end of this, if we’ve mis sold the business in some way or if it’s not an organisation that you want to work in, please come and see us. If we’ve made a mistake in recruiting someone, we’ll be incredibly generous. You spend a vast majority of your time at work, it should be fun and rewarding and enjoyable for you and if our culture doesn’t fit for you and you don’t want to work in a fast paced, high-performance culture – and not everybody does – then I’m so sorry that we’ve made that mistake. We aim to be clear and be kind; candour for kindness to make sure everyone knows what we’re like as a business. We want to bring together a diverse group of people and not because you’re ticking some woke box! We want to bring the best out people in and instead of seeing somebody’s personality flaws and their failings, focus on their personality strengths and accept we’re all different and just be tolerant of stuff.
Has workplace diversity and inclusion now become embedded or is there still much more to do?
It’s difficult because I think there’s always more to do. That’s the simple answer, but it’s difficult. If I look at the male/female balance, if I look in our warehouse, we would massively over index on female fork lift truck drivers. Bizarre, but there’s a dirty truth that women are often kinder and less aggressive so in terms of handling and damaging goods in a warehouse that works. That’s a generalisation based on 24 years of experience. Yet it’s surprisingly difficult to employ female fork lift truck drivers and we train most of our own via the warehouse team, but actually if you are recruiting them from a base warehouse labour perspective, that’s more male dominated. Our approach is to be as supportive and diverse as we can be. When I go out to recruit Non-Exec’s, the fact that we are based in Bolton, makes it difficult. We should have our board meetings here, we don’t, we have them in London. We do try to hold them around the business actually but most of them will be in London. Why? It’s a practical thing to deal with, you have to deal with all the practicalities. I want a highly functioning board. Two of our values are to treat every customer like your gran and do things that make your mum proud. So, when we build the board, I need to think whether my mum would be proud of the decisions we make. I try to make the right decisions, we try to recruit the right people. Do we always get it right, will you always please everyone? No. I gave up trying to please everyone a long time ago. Diversity is not just gender and skin colour, it’s everything that makes up an individual.
What legislation would you amend or implement to support UK business?
I would change a lot of things but in terms of one focus, it would be the Apprentice Levy. I would get people that are good at running things engaged in government. A brilliant example of that is making James Timpson the Prisons Minister. The sacrifices that James is making to do that is incredible, but he’ll make a huge difference. If we brought people, like James, to all key areas in Government, we could make an incredible amount of difference quickly.
In your opinion what elements are key to being a successful CEO?
Use your eyes and your ears. Be interested, be supportive, have a general disrespect for rules, because that allows you to be open minded to lots of different things. James Dyson has a great quote that is experience counts for nothing because all experience teaches you is what you used to do or what not to do. It teaches you what you should do but actually if you are going to disrupt and innovate, we should be focussing on what doesn’t work and how do we fix it.
How would you describe your leadership style?
It’s a mixture of being challenging, empowering, supportive and inspiring. It’s a blend of all of that. The inspiring thing is it comes from the empowerment of saying to people to go and have a go, you can. Don’t worry if you fail. It comes back to that failure thing. Go and try it.
What is your biggest career highlight or achievement to date?
I would probably say, doing the IPO because it was a real step change for the business. Who would have thought that with three of us starting with a tiny office, we would build what we have. It’s now a FTSE 250 business – it’s been done through grit, spit, determination, and the refusal to fail.
What’s next for you and AO?
More of the same. For me, I get a slightly better work/life balance, and through the culture of empowerment, I invest in other businesses as well, so I now do a little more of that. I enjoy the diversity of thought, I learn loads that I bring back to here and vice versa, so, yes, more of the same. We’ve got a really clear plan for the next five to 10 years at AO about what we’re going to do and how we’re going to do it.
