My love of speed, from that plane ride in 1980 to Sauze D’Oulx would stay with me all my life, I’d leave school with a disappointing but predictable solitary O Grade and get into retail work via the YTS scheme. Well, not strictly true, my dad wanted me to be a mechanic (anyone who knows me will piss themselves at that as I almost set fire to my McLaren by putting the oil cap back on the wrong way) so I started a YTS course as a HGV mechanic, I lasted less than a week before a douchebag
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| Life changer |
from Monifeith wanted to fight me, legitimately threatened me with a hack-saw, I remember saying to him; “what are you gonna saw meh feckin heed aff ya bam?”. A scuffle ensued and the gaffer bloke came back and promptly sacked both of us. Another chance meeting with a long haired douche from the posh part of town that (mercifully) got me out of the mechanical path. Complete side-note here, but I remember seeing my dad as angry as I’d ever see him (pre or post this incident) when I told my parents they’d “over-subscribed the class so I was randomly picked to not continue.” With that my dad went to the mechanic-school to remonstrate with them, he was incandescent when he came home that day, I got a blustering lecture peppered with expletives and it wasn’t even Hogmanay! (Friday night) I stayed with a mate that particular weekend dodging the supplementary, longer and more angry 80 shilling-infused bellowing, however, true to form I got it the following Hogmanay! Deservedly so I have to say.
Again, meeting people who’d impact on me, I’d ultimately end up department manager for the dairy wall. (Milk, cheese, butter, yoghurt - anything chilled that wasn’t butcher meat) This job was well before central distribution so I would be regularly visited by reps to sell me the latest fromage frais or cooked meat promo. And these guys always wore nice suits (nice to _me_) and drove brand new cars.
How I wanted a piece of that but, as this is a blog and not a novel (it’d need to be a War and Peace-esq affair to cover the amount of jobs I went through in my 20’s) I made my way to sales via a stint driving trucks for Robert Wiseman dairies and a stint running a warehouse for a contract flooring company. Then I’d meet another chap who’d change the direction of my life.
I’d heard via one of the delivery drivers to my warehouse that one of the domestic flooring company’s was looking to branch into
contract flooring and they needed a rep. So, I’d don my only suit (the one I wore to my stag night) and went one early morning to meet the guy who ran this company, Jimmy Cairnie. He wasn’t there (I just went up on spec at 08:00) but when he came in I noted his red BMW with JC number plates. I went in 5 minutes after he’d arrived, eager to show that I was the right man for the job, and thankfully he was decent enough to see me. I’d walk into his office to him puffing on a More fag, he looked up and proclaimed; “f*%k me you’re early!” I was offered a coffee, a fag and ultimately a job, even though the sales director at the time wasn’t a fan of a “no-experience” sales guy taking the role on.
I truly felt I’d “made it”, whatever “it” is. I believed to the bottom of my boots that this was me now;
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| My 1st company car - Renault 21 hatch |
on the road to greatness. Something I’d wanted my whole life was now tangible...a NEW CAR! I was a 22 year old laddie being asked what kind of car I would like to drive, and it kinda blew my mind. I got the car, but the job only lasted around a year, turns out the sales director was right, you can’t just give a guy with no sales experience a car, a pager (remember them?) a Yellow Pages (remember them?) an AA road atlas (remember them?) and expect him to sell shit loads of product. I did what I could but was ill-equipped to understand the sales process. But. Jimmy had given me something vital, my big break! I had a full 12 months experience in sales and enough wherewithal (bullshit) to blag into several other sales jobs, almost all of which would teach me the skills I needed to sell. One of them even had their own built for purpose sales training centre in Hemel Hempsted, their training was
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| Jimmy Cairnie would send me on a new direction |
amazing. But for Jimmy taking that chance and offering me a proper sales role (not double glazing or random pyramid schemes) I’d not have been given the interviews for the other roles, let alone actually get them! I’m still best of pals with his son Average Alan Cairnie, a very decent, honest and loyal (albeit average) guy.
The reason I mention sales is because whilst I’ve never lacked confidence, there are different sets of skills you learn in these roles, most notable are a thick skin and brass neck. I know non-sales folks think it is an easy life, swanning up and down the motorway in your company Sierra and your Burton’s suit (resplendent with brief case of course!) but it is not at all an easy way to make money. You spend most of your life in hard sales being told no. 95% no’s with 5% yes. The tenacity and mental strength you need to go out daily, weekly and monthly to be told no is indescribable to anyone whose not been in a hard-and-fast sales environment. In my 30’s, after all the hard sales jobs I landed some much more comfy (soft) sales roles which I found to be my Niche. Not the sledgehammer hard-close-sales role, the slow burn relationship building role, specification sales especially I loved, a challenge but hugely rewarding. I found the soft-sales roles quite easy, most likely because I was being told yes 90% of the time from existing customers. My last couple of sales jobs were brilliant. Making decent money, private healthcare, company expense account, freedom to work from home, (worked for company’s whose HQ’s were south of Hadrian’s Wall) great
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| "I'm a TIGER" (Sales techniques!) |
colleagues, reasonably well thought of within upper-management , all in all I HAD made it. I’m now 34 years of age and have all the trappings of the life I never thought would be mines, nice house in The Ferry (the burbs where all the posh folk live) (well; all the posh folk and me) nice car, nice wages, wife, bairn, friends...traveled a wee bit and seemed to have just about everything I could only imagine I’d have. As much as I enjoyed the jobs I had, my overly-active imagination would always dream of running my own business. I guess maybe everyone has these dreams, these ideas but for me it felt, strangely, like a calling. Is difficult to quantify, I always knew at some point I’d be running my own company, no idea what that company would be, but at some juncture of life I’d click with the right idea, meet the right person and BOOM! I’d be an overnight success and instant millionaire. Sadly, only one of those has become a reality, I do indeed own a company.
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| A not dissimilar laptop to the one I had |
1999, not the Prince song but the actual year, probably the best job I’ve ever had was presented to me via a recruitment agency. PAC International the UK leading manufacturer of access control wanted a specification sales exec for Scotland. They had a guy from Newcastle covering the bases but they needed a full timer. Cue - me! I’ve worked for 3 great sales managers in my time, Norman McColm, Richard Gretton and Alan Cooney. If I was ever in need of a sales manager, Mr Cooney would be the 1st one I’d ring. Alan was the one who offered me the job at PAC, and I loved that job. Is probably the most successful I’d been to date with me busting target month/quarter/year-in-year out, which probably sounds like me stroking my own ego, but it isn’t! The role just fitted me perfectly and the autonomy I was given suited me. Some employees need a lot of hand-holding, a lot of praise, a lot of encouragement and others just crack on. I was in the cracking-on department, and Mr Cooney recognised this and left
me in peace. I was given great product training, had an encyclopedic sales-training manual in my ever expanding grey matter and off I went. With this job, I got my 1st computer; I had never seen a laptop let alone “own” one, but this was mines...wow! So, back home after the 2 week long training at Stockport I am now reasonably proficient with the computer, I’d open up my search engine (Freeserve) and set up an email account. All the “kennymcleods” were taken so I tried a few others, a definite sign, or maybe an omen of what was to come, other than kenny.mcleod@pac.co.uk, my first email addy was monaco7@freeserve.com. My second search on Freeserve was “Formula One”, and low and behold, “Formula1.com” had a website and this would take me a step closer to my “calling”, not that I knew that at the time.
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| How Formula1.com looked back in the day |
Back in the ‘90’s there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram. Back then, bizarrely, people talked to each other. (A concept I know lost on many now) But, the “chatroom” on Formula1.com was a very early predecessor of what was to come. There would be around 2000 or so users of this chat facility which was obviously aimed at F1 enthusiasts. To be honest, back in 1999, I had one mate who was into F1, no one else I knew watched it. They’d all be talking about Rangers Athletic or Achtermuchty United or some other such team that kicked a ball around and I’d be all about Schumacher, Coulthard, Hakkinen, Villeneuve etc, it was rather a solitary conversation until I stumbled into this haven of like-minded souls. I had no real idea of what to do, how to reply etc, it was actually a bit of a tech-mine-field but the inhabitants of this F1 haven would guide me through it and I’d go onto be one of the more prolific posters. (Posting = writing into the group) The threads of conversation were brilliant, people from all around the world all talking about the particular F1 event of the day, and loads of them (posts and posters). Whilst there were thousands of registered users, there was a core of around 200 or so who would always engage in the chat. As creepy as it sounds, and it absolutely does, I’d go onto meet many of these strangers I’d encountered on the internet! I know with the various dating applications that meeting people from the internet is slightly less creepy now, but back in the early 00’s it was always awkward to explain “we met on the internet”. This era is pre smart phone so it was mainly confined to evenings and weekends, but I recall when Ellis was wee I’d put her to sleep and spend the rest of the night frying my 56k modem chatting with these cyber-friends I’d made. The chat would frequently go “off topic” and you’d find out more about the people you were interacting with, and by-and-large they were decent, professional people who happened to enjoy F1, I would go onto become one of, if not the biggest poster on this particular vehicle and indeed would go on to meet and form friendships with loads of the participants, in fact, the best friend a bloke could ask for was to be found on this very 'site my dear pal David John Parker. But, that's for sure a blog of its own, would be an injustice to his memory to have DJP as a part player in this blog.
In 2001, the managing director of PAC (Richie Herkes) and I have a wee chat at a sales meeting
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| 530 D - went like a train ! |
about the South of France, I’m giving a lot of thought to a holiday with the wife n bairn, but, it will ultimately have an F1 theme. He has a nice Nice gaff and waxes lyrical about how much I’d love it. So; 56k modem to the rescue and I book us a flight, hotel and car for my first ever trip to Monaco. The trip was to be 4 nights in Nice, drive to Maranello, 1 night in Maranello, back to Monaco and finish with 3 nights in Monaco. I'd hire a 5 series BMW for all the driving, but not until day 4 of the trip once we'd got Nice out of the way. Richie was to pick us up from the airport and take us for lunch, and true enough, he did exactly this and took us to The Negresco.
I'm not sure that in '01 the South of France was as big a tourist destination as it is now. With Easyjet, Jet2 and a host of other airlines all flying into Nice, it has become increasingly popular, but back in '01 I thought it felt quite 'lah-de-da', a bit like Monaco really. Full to brimming with people with way too much money, with wives young enough to be their grand-daughters and all dressed in gaudy designer clothing and all the trappings of their plastic surgeon. And, I was partially right, there were / are a lot of these types but I found Nice to be quite the relaxed place which had a great vibe. Having now traveled a great deal, there are places you visit and you "feel" something for the place, some places you do not and for me, ultimately it is the places where I "feel" that something in the local air that brings me back. It was most likely the incredible lunch at the Negresco, you know what they say about 1st impressions. Now, I was doing quite well at the time making decent money, but this lunch was....well....was not a lunch I would have relished had the bill came my way. But Richie was a generous soul and just kept plying my then-wife and I with loads of chilled red Sancerre. Yes, Sancerre rouge fresh in the South of France is a thing, and turns out, a right delicious thing at that! And what can I tell you about the hotel Negresco, truly the most remarkable place that can only really be done justice by visiting it. To this day, in spite of
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| Negresco Terrace |
having stayed at some of the most iconic hotels in the world over the past 17-years, The Negresco remains my all time favourite hotel in the world....it is bizarre, eccentric, very French and has more charm in its reception area than a chain of hotels could muster up in 100 of their corporate properties. If you find yourself in Nice, book a lunch on the terrace and order some Sancerre rouge, fresh sil vous plais, you'll get my gist.
Via Nice and Maranello I would find myself in Monaco at the end of our holiday. I had not booked a hotel instead opting to use my "brass neck" and "thick skin" to get a great deal on the day. Bugger me sideways, how little I knew about Monaco! We'd get back from the fairly long drive and I'd see the signs for Monaco. To an F1 fan, Monaco is Mecca. Really simple, of all the races on the calendar, even though Monaco is often the least thrilling, there is something about the history of the place, the pageantry, the glamour and the whole drama of it all that puts Monaco right in the centre of any F1 fans radar. I'd been watching this weird little track in this weird little place all my life, at this juncture for 25 years of my life, so to say I was excited about going to Monaco for the 1st time would be a huge understatement. And that.....that is where part II has to end because writing about Monaco from 01 to 03 has formed what would go onto become the biggest Adventure of my life...
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| Monaco baby |
Part III to follow..............
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