Family values drive motor man

Mar 10 2008 by Karen Dent, The Journal

Family values, sport and singing help Benfield Motors’ managing director Nigel McMinn bring balance to his life, as Karen Dent discovers.

FAMILY is vitally important to Nigel McMinn. Pictures of his young son Joseph, his wife Elaine and his “big daft brown dog” Murphy line the windowsill of his office overlooking the Tyne.

The 39-year-old managing director of Benfield Motors also had his parents on his mind when The Journal caught up with him. He was about to cook his first meal for them – a thank-you for wood-panelling an outhouse at his home in Gosforth, Newcastle, to accommodate his new rowing machine.

But he admits that balancing family life, his desire to catch the key moments in his 16-month-old son’s development and a demanding job at the head of the Newcastle car dealership, which has 25 branches and £310m annual turnover, can be tough.

“I would normally work until 8 o’clock at night – sometimes a lot later – but since Joseph has come along, I find myself thinking, ‘Could I do this at home?’ because if I leave now at 6 o’clock I’m going to see him before he goes to bed.

“If I’ve been away for a couple of nights or I’ve had a couple of normal evenings when I’m certainly away later than half past six, I’ll see him three or four mornings a week, then I’m going from weekend to weekend and I really don’t want to miss him growing up.

“My wife Elaine said, ‘Did you hear this? He says “light”’ – and of course, as soon as he sees me animated about it, he can’t stop repeating it, Light, light’, and he says it with this kind of Cockney gangster type of accent.

“I just absolutely love playing with him, interacting with him, spending time with him, but I’ve got to be realistic about it: I can’t have my cake and eat it. I can’t do this job and leave at 6 o’clock every night.”

Family values and a strong work ethic were instilled in McMinn early by his bank manager father: “He would quite often come home, have dinner and go into his study for a couple of hours, and I suppose I get my work ethic from my father.

“A lot of people say that we’re like peas in a pod, and I’m very happy with that, I think such a lot about him that I take that as a real compliment when people say, ‘You’re like your father’.”

McMinn grew up in a various places – moving every few years because of his father’s job – before the family settled in Lytham St Annes in Lancashire.

Just as he was about to enter his final year at school, his father was relocated to Durham to manage Barclays Bank. It was decided McMinn would stay with a friend’s family while he completed his studies.

He said: “If I’m being honest, I was probably someone who needed to be pushed and my friend’s father was much more of a taskmaster than my own.

“He used to get us all up at 6 o’clock in the morning. He drove me through that year. When we came back from school, we’d go for a run, or do some exercise, then we’d do two hours of solid revision which I really don’t think I’d have done if I’d been staying at home.

“I ended up being house captain, deputy head boy, captain of the first team at rugby, so had I lost all of those things by moving to a different school, it could have potentially derailed me at a critical time.”

Sport has always featured prominently in his life. He plays golf – “You can’t grow up in a place like Lytham and not be interested in golf” – and is a member of Northumberland Golf Club, even though he no longer plays as often as he would like.

He has run the London Marathon, played rugby for Gosforth and for Northern, and is a big fan of Kevin Keegan. McMinn originally arrived in Newcastle around the same time as Keegan began his first stint in charge of the Magpies.

He said: “I found Newcastle to be very big, vibrant, almost a bit intimidating at first. I absolutely loved it. I thought it was exciting, that it was another adventure, you know – this is what the real world’s about.

“I’d got this impression of Newcastle that perhaps it was this dark, industrial city in the North. But even at that time, it was a vibrant, happening city with a great cultural life and social life, so very different to what I’d been used to.”

Although describing his childhood as nomadic, McMinn is now firmly rooted in the region. “I was 18 when I came up here, my parents moved when I was 17 and I’m 40 this year – so my parents’ home and I suppose my own home for the majority of my life has been in and around Newcastle or Durham.

“So while I’m a bit of a nomad, when people say where is home, for a long time I would say I’m originally from Lytham but I live in Newcastle. But now I say I’m from Newcastle. I think it’s legitimate when I’ve spent more than half my life here.”

Following university in Edinburgh, McMinn settled in Newcastle where he worked for Price Waterhouse and then took an accountancy post in Darlington.

Despite being a qualified chartered accountant, he always saw this as a stepping stone to a career in industry. He says his love of cars is a boy thing but securing his first job in the motor industry with car dealer Reg Vardy was not part of any master plan.

“I’ve always been fascinated by cars and from first moving to the North East, my dad and I used to drive up to Reg Vardy Houghton-le-Spring and press our noses up against the window and look at the Lamborghinis and the Ferraris and Aston Martins,” he said.

“My dad always had car magazines and he would pass them on to me. By the age of 10 or 11, I could probably tell you the make and model of every car that drove past. It must be a boy thing, but I can’t honestly say I chose Reg Vardy and said I want to get a job in the motor industry.”

Being in the right place at the right time led to a decade with the Reg Vardy group, both in the North East and in Edinburgh, where he was the regional director for East Scotland. He says the business, although publicly owned, still retained the feel of a family firm.

“Vardy had a great reputation as a company that was going places. It had about 30-odd dealerships, the City had very high expectations of the business, so it was bit of a North East darling as a company,” he said.

“The family values and the team spirit within that company that Peter Vardy created was something which made it massively more rewarding to be at work.

“You really felt as if you were playing in a big football team and that you had your role on the pitch and that if you had a good game, someone would pat you on the back and say well done.

“It was very dynamic, very fast-moving. I think that has implanted something in my head that says family values and team spirit are very important to individuals in deciding where they want to work.

“The company was also doing extremely well. It seemed to hit every target going, to exceed every target and that makes you feel like you’re playing for the Man United of the industry.”

However, things changed as the business grew and was ultimately taken over by the Pendragon motor group. “We always thought that because Peter Vardy owned 30% of the shares, we were bulletproof, nobody could ever take us over, and of course, we’d always been the acquirer. It never actually entered our thoughts that somebody would buy Reg Vardy.”

McMinn returned to the North East from Edinburgh to become Benfield’s managing director at the end of 2006. He found himself at the helm of another firm with solid family values – Benfield has been owned by the Squires family for half a century. He is the first person from outside the family to be appointed to the role.

“I am the first non-family member to be MD of Benfield, but am just as fiercely proud of its heritage,” he said.

“They own all of the shares, and of course, in one respect, that makes me feel even more comfortable because there can’t possibly be this plc shock takeover that happened at Vardy. The full 18 shareholders in the Squires family all have to say yes to selling it, so it really is truly a family concern.

“What I’ve also seen is that they have got an awful lot of people who have worked for them for 20, 30, 40 years so they don’t just say we value staff loyalty and we aspire to having it, they’ve got it.

“I’ve never known a company in our industry have so many people who have worked for a company so long.

“It’s remarkable that the company is 50 years old this year and has stayed around – being profitable every single year of that 50 – while so many other groups have come and gone in the region such as Cowie, Vardy, Bramalls, Patterson, Priory etc.

“I’m convinced it is the family values that have made the difference to staff satisfaction and long-term loyalty and consequently the service we give to customers.”

This appreciation of team spirit has spilled over into McMinn’s latest extra-curricular activity. He is currently rehearsing with a large choir for the Sing Live project.

He said: “Twice a year, there’s a group called Sing Live who perform at the Sage Gateshead. The most recent one we did there was back in November and was all swing music. We performed to two sell-out audiences, 1,700 people each, doing Frank Sinatra and Robbie Williams.

“It’s fantastic – I’m just a very weak, amateur singer but in a choir of 300, it’s great light relief. I enjoy singing – if you’re somebody who enjoys singing when you’re in the car and can hold a bit of a tune, then Sing Live is great. I went along and did it last year, and we’ve just started again. The performance is in mid-April

“My wife is actually a much better singer than I am but she’s not involved. She encourages me to do it, I think she sees I need to have my brain concentrating on something other than work.

“When you’ve got to learn all the words to that and all the music, it’s quite challenging.”

So what does a self-confessed “car nut” drive? Currently, McMinn can be found behind the wheel of a Volkswagen Touareg 4x4.

He said: “I had an Aston Martin DB9. Just as I bought that car actually, all of these adverts were running on television with James Nesbitt. He’d just bought a sports car and his wife tells him she’s pregnant so he rings up and gets an insurance quote for a people carrier.

“I was pretty much the same, I’d bought that car as Elaine became pregnant and very shortly after, we moved down here. It was just crazy really, it was impractical to keep it. I’m sure I’ll aspire to having one again at some point, but I’ve done the sensible thing.”

CV

November 2006 – Present – Benfield Motors – Managing Director

April 1996 to October 2006 – Reg Vardy plc Started as a financial analyst rising to become regional director for East Scotland for three years.

1995 to 1996 – Prontaprint plc - commercial accountant

1991 to 1995 – Price Waterhouse – audit and business advisory services

Questionnaire

What car do you drive?

VW Touareg

What’s your favourite restaurant?

Dusit Thai in Edinburgh

Who or what makes you laugh?

Peter Kay, Paul Merton and my son Joseph

What’s your favourite book?

Anything by Ian Rankin

What was the last album you bought?

Michael Buble – Call Me Irresponsible

What’s your ideal job, other than the one you’ve got?

Professional golfer

If you had a talking parrot, what’s the first thing you would teach it to say?

Just do it!

What’s your greatest fear?

Losing my memory or my balance

What’s the best piece of business advice you have ever received?

Be eclectic and a daily dose of paranoia is a good thing

And the worst?

If you want it done right then do it yourself

What’s your poison?

Pint of cold Guinness

What newspapers do you read, other than The Journal?

Daily Telegraph but only occasionally

How much was your first pay packet?

£40 cash for two nights work in a pub

How do you keep fit?

Concept 2 rowing machine at home and walking the dog

What’s your most irritating habit?

Being late

What’s your biggest extravagance?

Golf club membership

Which historical or fictional character do you most identify with or admire?

Hannibal (the Commander not the Cannibal!)

Which four famous people would you most like to dine with?

Fiona Bruce, Gordon Ramsey, Jeremy Clarkson, Andrew Marr

How would you like to be remembered?

Versatile