Gary Ward began his career at Dalgety Spillers Management rising to Divisional Management Accountant before leaving to join the Granada group. From Group Accounting Manager he became Finance Director of the Motorway Services and hospitality division, leaving to become Divisional Finance Director for Dairy Crest the commercial arm of the Milk Marketing Board.  On leaving Dairy Crest in 1995 he completed his first Venture Capital backed MBO with two partners to create First Motorway Services Ltd. Gary then successfully made a career out of raising money for various MBO and MBI deals in the role of Chairman, Managing Director or Finance Director. He retired age 53 and now pursues other challenges with his time.
Skype Interview 14.05.14
 
 
Audio
http://tori-ufondu.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/gary-ward1.mp3
 

 
Transcript
What do you think is the difference between a successful career and a successful life?
Gary: From a family perspective, I’ve always been able to say, that’s work, that’s family. And obviously in the early days ‘that’ was a partner, it became a wife and then a family.  So all the way through my early twenties into my early thirties, I didn’t have a family but I had a wife, and therefore family/friends/socialising was a different thing to work and I was able to very quickly identify what was work and what was family and continue that – and do continue that – all the way through my life.  I’m not saying that work doesn’t impinge on the family and at some stage if you want to be successful – you know there was a time when putting in the hours was what it took but that was a long time ago – having said that, to be successful in what you do, you do have to put the hours in.  Something will come up, you know? You’ll be getting on with something and if you are focused  – you see I have this ability to focus, I have the ability to switch off which is great, thank goodness for that – but I have this ability to focus and if I focus, I go, I get on with it and I go for it.  Now that’s sometimes, and doing that you can get carried away, you can let time run away with you, but I have on the whole known when to stop and say ‘oh, enough, I’ve got to get out of here, I’ve got another life, there’s another part of me apart from work’.  Now some have said that I’m a workaholic, but I’m not, I’m not.  I just like to get – I want to get the job done.  I am someone that will say ‘Right, I’m gonna do this to 110% of my ability’ and therefore I’m gonna get on with it.  Because of my focus, I am able to cut to the chase, and I can say ‘hang on, that’s not relevant, that’s relevant, we’ve got to sort that out’ and look ahead, I’ve always been able to plan ahead and think ‘well if that’s where we’re heading, this is what we’ve gotta do.’  But in terms of your question, you know coming back to that, I think it boils down to just knowing what the difference is and that’s very important.  Otherwise you go mad, you lose it, you go mad, you think what??  I know a lot of people that are still working all the hours, and they’re in senior jobs.  I mean these people – If I’d have stayed doing the job that I was doing, I would have been FD of a major organisation, corporate organisation.  That would have been my path, but maybe we’ll get onto that later, I didn’t want to end up there, I chose a different path  – but those people that are doing the job now really have given up a lot of their family life, I know they have, I know them.  They really do work all the way through a weekend, they never clock off, they’re always on call.  You know, they may be being paid £350K a year and all the perks and status that goes with it, but they don’t have a family life, they really have, as far as I’m concerned just lost it, you know?