How Jeff Dewing went from bankruptcy to £70m fortune #UKFinance
CashNews.co
“I’ve always been this overpowering character,” says Jeff Dewing, founder of facilities management firm Cloud. “I’ve always had ambitious ideas and been the person who has come up with a solution.”
It is one reason why the business — which Dewing says is set to be valued at between around £250m to £400m within three years — has renamed their inspirational boss as CIO, or chief inspiration officer, instead of the more traditional CEO.
In the early 1980s, Dewing was an engineer fixing fridges. Following a divorce after nearly three years, long working hours led his new wife to peruse newspaper adverts where she came across an air conditioning manager role. It gave him an insight into sales, accountancy and contracting which he would never have garnered out on the road.
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After 12 months, he set up maintenance firm Essex Air Conditioning (EAC) and was soon turning over around £5m before taking an interest in football ownership and invested into non-league outfit Clacton FC.
But, having taken an eye off his business, the Clacton “distraction” saw EAC going bankrupt which, at one point, left Dewing with £7.60 to his name after being unable to buy a loaf of bread. He was forced to draw jobseekers allowance for six months.
After several jobs in the corporate sector, Cloud’s journey was spawned in Dewing’s garden shed. With the help of his wife and daughter, he slowly built its “purpose, concept and problem it would solve” over four years before Cloud went to market in 2012.
Their first client was Republic Clothing, which had over 100 shops at the time, before landing charity Age UK. The business turned over £1m in its first 12 months of trading and £70m within four years from its fast-food and restaurant clients.
Jeff Dewing at Cloudfest, a celebration the founder puts on for his team with wellness activities.
When COVID hit, Dewing says the business “fell off a cliff” as Cloud looked set to cut staffing levels from 400 to 200. All bar its software engineers were furloughed, as Cloud doubled down on investing in tech, which clients such as TUI (TUI.F), The White Company and BPP use for real-time financial reporting, supply chain activity and task management.
Amid an emergency meeting and mounting debt, his senior team then asked Dewing for guidance. The ideas guru was at a loss.
“I generally had no idea,” he recalls. “When they saw that vulnerability, they told me to switch off for four days and that they would come up with some solutions.”
This vulnerability also came to the fore when Dewing addressed his staff via video link and broke down in tears.
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“When I came back into the office, they had over 10 scenarios, each one attached with value and a story behind it,” adds Dewing.
“I sat with my jaw on the table. The purpose behind the statement was ‘if you want to grow, let go’ and if you really want to see the power of the people, give them the chance. But you can only do that by being vulnerable [as a leader].”
COVID also allowed Cloud to reimagine the business as a whole. “I used to say to myself all the time ‘I wonder how quickly we will unlearn this?’ What we’ve found is that our productivity, culture and bonding between the teams has gone through the roof.”
Cloud refit their offices for “collaboration places” and a “home from home” for its employees. “You only go to the office for three reasons: to collaborate, solve problems and have fun. You don’t transact, you do that at home,” admits Dewing. “The coffee machine chat has been worthless for 50 years. There was no authenticity in it.”
Jeff Dewing with former England cricket captain Sir Alastair Cook at the ground where Cloud became a stadium naming rights partner.
Now, Cloud’s teams meet every six to eight weeks where they can agree amongst themselves. “When they come in, they don’t say ‘good morning’ and sit at their desk,” adds the East Ender. “They cuddle and there is this incredible change of relationship structure.
“Now people don’t want it any other way and we don’t have meetings before 10am due to school runs. It is a complete reversal of what we thought was normal.”
Dewing also shunned the consultation process for an innovative approach when redundancies loomed, instead looking for three staff who wanted to start their own venture which could help with Cloud’s own supply chain, as well as guaranteeing client basis, income and acting as guarantors for three years for the budding entrepreneurs. Cloud then helped transition employees into the new businesses.
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“I’ve always been that way,” Dewing says of his entrepreneurial spirit, “but I didn’t know why until someone badgered me for five years to write a book [Doing The Opposite, which was published in 2021].
“I had to go back to my parents house and look through every photo. It all came to life. That exercise alone showed me why I did the opposite due to the environment I was brought up in.”
In 2017, Cloud joined forces with Essex Cricket Club to become the county’s stadium naming rights partner. One of Dewing’s first acts was to reimagine the changing rooms.
“You can’t motivate people here,” Dewing said when he first viewed them.
“Players know sponsors come and go, but when they saw that this sponsor cared more about their changing rooms than their signage, it had a material impact.” Rather like Dewing’s impact with his own business and staff.
