Charles’ office is on the sixth floor of the White Building (TalkTalk HQ). It is modest with the most prominent feature being a large framed photograph of a view from the Mandarin Hotel overlooking central park in New York behind his desk. I was meeting Charles with Louis who is also on the NEF (New Entrepreneur’s Foundation) programme with me. He warmly ushered us in and asked us to make ourselves comfortable on the black couches. First impressions were that Charles is the type of person that you immediately warm to. He makes you feel at ease and despite his vast success does an incredible job of staying humble. There was no inkling of ego and he was extremely charming (even when I had my fan moment and asked for a photo with him!).

He kicked off by asking how he could help myself or Louis. We replied that we were really there to get to know him as a person as well as a business man. So below is what we learnt…

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF CHARLES:

Louis and I wanted to know what a typical day for him was like. He replied that it would be very difficult for him to say what a typical day looks like as he does very different things daily. There are lots of things that he is involved with. For instance today he had a friendly doubles tennis match with friends in the morning, a couple of meetings at the White Building of which we were one and then he was heading for a meeting at the Prince’s Trust. On hearing about the tennis we asked who his favourite tennis player was. Charles replied Federer because he has a gentlemanly attitude and behaviour despite his success. Although, Charles said he is not the biggest of Tennis fans.

Of course he is interested in business which takes up a lot of his time. He is the chairman of the Prince’s Trust and is supporting the NEF programme. Currently Charles is involved with ten different businesses but with experience he told us it gets easier to manage.

ON BUSINESS:

One thing that Charles has been known to say is that in business “you need to zig whilst everyone else is zagging.”

He’s fascinated about how things work and with any business he has come across he is fundamentally interested in the proposition and how it makes money. Charles affectionately mentioned his wife at this point and said that she was less bothered about the “how” of something working but more concerned that it did. He knows random facts like how a washing machine works or why we have tides and it’s this inquisitive nature that allows him to look at any industry and want to “rewire” it to work differently or better. He doesn’t look at creating a new market but just creating a different way of operating in that market.

Charles feels that you put as much effort in starting a business in a small market as you do in starting a business in a large market which is why he has never entered the market of pet insurance. He said having a very small piece of a large market is much better than having a small piece of a small market. Today he felt that the industries ripe for disruption were Finance (high barriers to entry) and Energy.

It can be difficult to land demand. Charles likes to throw as much as possible into a proposition to make it compelling for the customer. If he could have done the free broadband with TalkTalk Plc differently he probably would have limited the number of free sign ups to 10,000 a week and kept that momentum over a period of time like the Hard Rock Cafe business model.

Using Alex Ferguson vs. Arsene Wenger as an example we discussed how different character traits will lead to different management styles but that unlike the business books would like to have you believe there is no one right answer. It is more important to have capable people that you can teach to do things that work well together than an all star team that doesn’t.

For any budding entrepreneurs reading this Charles is involved inwww.fundingcircle.com and lends to new start-ups through this. He thinks that this is a great business model for financing. It was interesting to learn that Charles has never taken any VC money which is why he retains high equity stakes in any of his businesses. It’s important with regards financing to start with minimum investment so that you know your business works efficiently and can make money.

AT A DINNER PARTY: I then asked him “If you could have any people living or dead come to a dinner party who would you want to come and why?”

Charles clarified if the individuals needed to get along or could just be individuals he was interested in. I replied they could just be people that he was interested in but didn’t necessarily have to get along.

Thinking it over Charles replied with the following:

NELSON: Because he was a kind of maverick/rebel figure.

CLINTON (Bill): Charles at this point clarified that he meant Bill not Hillary or even the more unlikely Chelsea. Because he was a compassionate capitalist and had the ability to get people to follow him which is an extremely difficult thing to do.

ELIZABETH I: She inherited a difficult situation and being a woman in those times was still able with steely calm and logic with a successful reign navigated the country to a strong place.

WARREN BUFFETT: Because yes, he’s a financial genius but he also has an interesting take on the world. A lot of common sense.

Charles added that Steve Jobs would probably not have made the list. Charles had met him several times and despite Jobs being a visionary and debatably the greatest business person of our generation he would only eat at one restaurant in London. The infamous NOBU in Mayfair; probably couldn’t imagine Nelson or Elizabeth I eating there.

FAVOURITE QUOTE: Louis then asked Charles what his favourite quote/mantra was. It is The Man in the Arena — Excerpt from a speech by Theodore Roosevelt (1910).

Charles proceeded to read it to us:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

On finishing reading it he said that when he thinks about being on his deathbed and looking back he wants to feel like he had at least tried and accomplished something. He emphasised that it’s important to not always sit on the sidelines. I don’t think anyone could ever accuse him of that.

The half an hour we had with Charles turned into an hour. Much to our delight these meetings are going to be a frequent occurrence.

So what was the best thing I learnt from Charles today? It’s ok if you don’t read the FT. He doesn’t read the FT ☺ “Why?” — I asked aghast (having religiously read it for years). Because he finds it dry and you can learn more from people around you. Judging by today I think I would have to agree.