Three Summary Insights From Bank of Dave — Introduction and a Bit About Dave

INTRODUCTION

You might remember the financial crisis in the early 2000s when Lehman Brothers went bust and governments around the world had to bail out banks with large amounts of money. It was events like this that made Dave Fishwick believe that there should be a better way to do banking. Bank of Dave written by Dave Fishwick tells the story of how he wanted to start a bank in his local community of Burnley to do what banks should really do instead of losing billions of dollars.

In the book you will read a bit about Dave’s own life, how he started in business, and the steps he took towards setting up Burnley Savings and Loans. This book is written in an easy-to-understand and at the same time humorous format. But don’t be fooled by the humour or straightforward language, there are lots of brilliant entrepreneurial and leadership lessons in the book.

A BIT ABOUT DAVE

Dave grew up in Burnley and as a young kid, he was small and skinny and back in those days a perfect target for bullying. Unfortunately, he experienced bullying constantly till he stood up for himself one day and ended up having a successful fight with a bully. At that point, he knew he could stand up for himself.

He was not great at school and left at the age of 16 with poor qualifications. His dad pulled him into the building trade believing there was no other option for him but Dave hated it. And even as a builder, Dave was woeful. In the end, the person managing the building site had to confine Dave to transporting cement in a bucket rather than getting involved in the actual building work which he was supposed to be learning.

But Dave had a passion and it was cars. Often he would head off to car auction sales, sit down there and just watch what was happening. But he had no money to get involved. In fact, Dave was so broke that he sat down at tables with leftover cups of tea and drank the remains. But change was on the way for Dave. One day he chucked up the courage to speak to a part exchange dealer and that’s where his business story started.

We will pick up from here in the next post with my first lesson from the book titled, Starting Out.