Page 107 - James Caan - The Real Deal

10 · The Beginning

A Rolls is not what you expect a twenty-four-year-old to buy,
but, I tell you, driving it felt absolutely fantastic. People stopped
to look at it, drivers let me out at junctions just so that they could
check out the car, people even waved. I had seen enough
businesses go bust over the years to know that entrepreneurs who
had created a lot of wealth could be left with nothing. They
ploughed everything back into the business and never enjoyed the
fruits of their labours. Equally, I had seen several entrepreneurs
take all the profits out of their businesses and squander the money
on expensive toys to the detriment of their business. I’ve always
thought that the wealth of the business owner should be in line
with the wealth of the business, and the boutiques were more than
capable of paying for two very nice cars at that stage.
On one level I really felt like I’d arrived, but on another I was
eager for more. I suppose I could have devised ways of turning the
House of Aisha into a national brand, but, as I’ve said before, it
wasn’t my dream or my passion, and I had a really strong desire
to get back to working in the centre of town and making use of
my recruitment skills.
In retail there are always times of the day that are quiet, and so
I used to sit in the shop and daydream. If we weren’t expanding
there wasn’t all that much for me to do: no lease to negotiate, no
staff to hire, no costings to forecast. In short, I was getting bored,
and so I started daydreaming about what else I could do.
After a few months of this I’d started to visualise a new business.
For a couple of years I’d had a vague idea about taking the sales
skills and energy levels of Reid Trevena into the recruitment
industry, and as I daydreamed this idea really started to take
shape. I had a book that I doodled in and wrote down the
attributes my dream business would have. What I really wanted, I
realised, was to start a recruitment business with a difference. I
now understood the principles of running a business, and I knew
that if you didn’t have a unique selling point, a USP, then you were

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