Page 207 - James Caan - The Real Deal

Chapter 20

Investing in People

(1993–1995)

‘ I don’t know why I had so much front. It was like David

asking Goliath to come to London, and give up a lucrative
corporate career in the process. ’

aving tried myself to make Alexander Mann more corpor-
H ate, supporting Jonathan was my number one priority for the
first six months he was with us. By the middle of 1993, he was
starting to take control, and that freed me up to look for new
opportunities. In my mind I had the idea that I wanted to start one
new business a year for ten years, so I was constantly on the
lookout for talented people and lucrative ideas. It was a pretty
bold statement to make, but articulating my ambitions for growth
had the effect of galvanising the team: if I was talking confidently
about the future, they started to feel confident about it, too.
Networking had become very important to my career, and a lot
of my time was spent catching up with old friends and colleagues
or attending conferences so that I could better assess the market.
One of my research trips took me to a recruitment conference in

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