In the second in our UKBF Stories series, we catch up with founder Richard Osborne on what inspired him to start the forum, and how his other businesses came about.
This series of conversations looks at why people get into business, their motivations, the lessons they learn and how they grow and develop.
In the first video, Richard opened up about his difficult childhood and told us how it affected his outlook going into his own business.
For this second video, Richard goes on to explain that when he started his first business, he “didn’t even know what a company was” as his employer at the time set it up for him.
So how did he go from this to building a successful business portfolio? We look at how he took the lessons learned in these early days and used them to his advantage.
“I very quickly realised that running a business is not as easy as it seems. Raising invoices and getting paid, filing my accounts at Companies House and marketing were all alien to me,” he recalls.
“The business ticked along but it struggled. In hindsight, the relationship of moving from boss and employee to business partners was tricky. If we had our time again it would be very different.”
Despite this difficult start, Richard persevered as a business owner. He soon struck upon a new idea to sell domain names in bulk. In those pre-Google days, and as the only player in this particular field, it was an instant success. But it didn’t last and he moved on to a brief stint being employed in a “real” job.
The orders started to come in, but as the sales were made online, his bank restricted his funds for security purposes. He hit rock bottom financially and was forced to change his account to a different bank.
“About a week later, just over £50,000 was transferred into the company account. I literally had a fifty grand boost to the business overnight,” he says. “I put loads of it into promotional activities and the business just skyrocketed.”
During this time, Richard was working on his own at home around the clock. He had no one to talk to about the challenges he was facing as a small business owner and went in search of support online.
He discovered a basic forum for exactly this purpose and got together with its creator to develop UKBF. In 2005, Richard bought him out and invested in branding and advertising to grow the platform.
But again, it wasn’t to last. Two years later, his mother-in-law died suddenly, sending shockwaves through his family. Feeling overwhelmed, he made the tough decision to sell the forum.
BDG took Richard in a new direction, and he moved into the world of corporations. He wanted to bring people on board who had similar values and complementary skills to his own – but he recognised that they needed to come on board with a stake in the business.
So where does UKBF fit into the picture today, and how did he end up buying it back?
For some time he had been keen to take ownership of the forum back, but he could never find a way to convince his board. Then, during the pandemic, it became clear how reliant BDG is on the business startup side of things. The team realised that they needed to complement this with information about the ongoing journey of small businesses.
It was a lightbulb moment. Richard finally had a justification for buying UKBF back, so he put together a full business plan. In it, he outlined how they could plug the tools they had developed in BDG into the UKBF platform.
“UKBF is like a massive library with 200,000 pages of Q&As that you can digest in your own time.”
When Richard considers his current portfolio of businesses, he’s pleased to see how well they sit alongside one another.
“We help hundreds of thousands of companies to set up every year, and we have thousands of businesses a day engaging with UKBF. It’s quite cool to think that we’re a little business in Blisworth and we do that much.”
But he doesn’t want it to end there. His big aspiration for UKBF is to see it become the voice of micro business owners.
“BDG has lobbied the government for changes related to the Companies Act and been successful. It would be great to expand that further into the issues that people have in small businesses.”
If you want to hear more about how Richard built his business, watch the video interview in full on YouTube. It’s the second in a series of five videos about business owners who have benefited from the UKBF community.
This series of conversations looks at why people get into business, their motivations, the lessons they learn and how they grow and develop.
In the first video, Richard opened up about his difficult childhood and told us how it affected his outlook going into his own business.
For this second video, Richard goes on to explain that when he started his first business, he “didn’t even know what a company was” as his employer at the time set it up for him.
So how did he go from this to building a successful business portfolio? We look at how he took the lessons learned in these early days and used them to his advantage.
The early days of trial and error
After “dabbling in building a few websites”, it seemed obvious to Richard that he should set up on his own. His boss offered to invest and together they set up his first business, Netrotech.“I very quickly realised that running a business is not as easy as it seems. Raising invoices and getting paid, filing my accounts at Companies House and marketing were all alien to me,” he recalls.
“The business ticked along but it struggled. In hindsight, the relationship of moving from boss and employee to business partners was tricky. If we had our time again it would be very different.”
Despite this difficult start, Richard persevered as a business owner. He soon struck upon a new idea to sell domain names in bulk. In those pre-Google days, and as the only player in this particular field, it was an instant success. But it didn’t last and he moved on to a brief stint being employed in a “real” job.
The need for business support
Inspired by his early experiences when he didn’t understand how to set up a business, Richard’s next chapter saw him starting another new company, Quick Formations. Its purpose was to quickly and easily create companies for people starting out.The orders started to come in, but as the sales were made online, his bank restricted his funds for security purposes. He hit rock bottom financially and was forced to change his account to a different bank.
“About a week later, just over £50,000 was transferred into the company account. I literally had a fifty grand boost to the business overnight,” he says. “I put loads of it into promotional activities and the business just skyrocketed.”
During this time, Richard was working on his own at home around the clock. He had no one to talk to about the challenges he was facing as a small business owner and went in search of support online.
He discovered a basic forum for exactly this purpose and got together with its creator to develop UKBF. In 2005, Richard bought him out and invested in branding and advertising to grow the platform.
But again, it wasn’t to last. Two years later, his mother-in-law died suddenly, sending shockwaves through his family. Feeling overwhelmed, he made the tough decision to sell the forum.
Growing from entrepreneur to corporation
During this time, Richard stayed busy, channelling his energy into Quick Formations and setting up two new businesses: eFiling and Business Data Group (BDG).BDG took Richard in a new direction, and he moved into the world of corporations. He wanted to bring people on board who had similar values and complementary skills to his own – but he recognised that they needed to come on board with a stake in the business.
So where does UKBF fit into the picture today, and how did he end up buying it back?
For some time he had been keen to take ownership of the forum back, but he could never find a way to convince his board. Then, during the pandemic, it became clear how reliant BDG is on the business startup side of things. The team realised that they needed to complement this with information about the ongoing journey of small businesses.
It was a lightbulb moment. Richard finally had a justification for buying UKBF back, so he put together a full business plan. In it, he outlined how they could plug the tools they had developed in BDG into the UKBF platform.
Becoming the voice of small businesses
“Everyone has the same challenges in business. You’ll find that someone might have asked your question six months ago and the answers can still be relevant today,” Richard said.“UKBF is like a massive library with 200,000 pages of Q&As that you can digest in your own time.”
When Richard considers his current portfolio of businesses, he’s pleased to see how well they sit alongside one another.
“We help hundreds of thousands of companies to set up every year, and we have thousands of businesses a day engaging with UKBF. It’s quite cool to think that we’re a little business in Blisworth and we do that much.”
But he doesn’t want it to end there. His big aspiration for UKBF is to see it become the voice of micro business owners.
“BDG has lobbied the government for changes related to the Companies Act and been successful. It would be great to expand that further into the issues that people have in small businesses.”
If you want to hear more about how Richard built his business, watch the video interview in full on YouTube. It’s the second in a series of five videos about business owners who have benefited from the UKBF community.
