Subscribe to our free newsletter to receive the most productive stories from North Wales sent to your email
One of Wales’ most successful marketers talks about how he went from poverty on a municipal estate to becoming a billionaire.
Paul Ragan is the brainchild of one of the UK’s largest rental operators, former owner of Cardiff Devils and a two-time guest on Channel Four’s Secret Millionaire.
He even once owned two racehorses, a Grand National racer, and has an expensive-looking watch on his wrist, according to Wales Online.
But the entrepreneur began his adventure after leaving school at 16 with only a level O ‘for him. He has been unemployed for months and lives on the job search allowance.
All of that was replaced when Ragan, who was then 20 years old, found himself with a turnover of £ 50 million in London and was given the opportunity to start his own business.
Three years later, Ragan his Mataquote insurance company, which was sold for £ 10 million twenty years later.
The 53-year-old has spoken of his traumatic early years when he and his younger sister grew up having to endure wild fluctuations in their schizophrenic mother’s personality.
“We used to go home from school to get cookies for dinner,” he says. “We had no cash, she gave everything to the church and surely nothing was left.
“It was very traumatic, crying yourself to sleep was a general thing back then. I was content to spend hours kicking a ball opposite the wall and my sister had a doll and that’s all we had.
“Dad my hero, we all did it together, but he left and my mother had depression and became schizophrenic. “
Ragan, who is now the father of 4 children, described how his mother heard voices and how his illness “played a trick on his brain. ” Davina came into contact with a Pentecostal church and, between the ages of five and 11, the church has become the only other circle of relatives that Paul knew.
“We live a very sheltered and deficient life until we were 11,” continues Paul. “It is devastating to live with it. Mom can be just smart or very competitive with us and she would hit us because her voices told her to. It is a disease, she had no idea what was happening, however, for us young people it was very difficult to perceive at that time.
“It was difficult, living with someone who had a split personality. He would surely be fine one moment and then hit us the next day. “
Soccer was his hobby, but he was not allowed to play. “I came to school to ask Mom if I could play soccer in a national competition,” he says. She rejected it.
Davina gave all the cash she had to the church, Paul had a hard time accepting.
Teenager Paul was frustrated, if not bitter, at what the church had taken away from his mother when she was obviously so vulnerable and at the age of 17 he came back for the answers but was left empty-handed in the end.
“I don’t blame my mother, however, the church took everything from her and she never acted in a smart religion with us children,” he said.
At the age of 11 his fortune was replaced when his father came to church and moved to start a new life with his father and stepmother in Surrey.
His mom and sister moved into a council space in Southampton, and Ragan says he still talks to his mom every day.
However, Paul’s life was still far from settled and he moved to Yateley, then Skipton and, despite everything, returned to Wales in Sully before he was 16 years old.
His education “suffered a lot,” he says, and he dropped out of school at 16 with an O ‘in history.
He went to school for a business course but failed two months before throwing in the towel.
Instead, he headed straight for the paintings, after completing a two-week painting show at the Golly Slater ad agency.
“I was presented with an assignment to stay,” he says. “I thought, ‘College stuff, I’d do an assignment and earn some money. ‘
You can still find out exactly how much they paid you – £ 2,000 a year. He stayed with him for a year until an officer presented him with a road cloth testing task on the newly built M25. The paintings came here on a £ 5,500 salary and on-site accommodation in a caravan and it seemed too smart for 19-year-old Paul to refuse.
“I came to this place dressed with 80 guys all dressed in rubber boots,” he recalls. “I didn’t know, I think how he presented himself for interviews. “
He was assigned the task, probably out of sympathy because he was so naive, and he started right away, adding: “I never thought it was a career. ” After a season there, he returned to Southampton to enroll for his mother and sister.
“I was unemployed, my mother lived in a municipal department and I had to apply for a hundred jobs,” he says, remembering how desperate life seemed at 20 years old.
“And then I had 3 tasks on the same day: driving a van, running in a bar, and an access to knowledge task with Sun Alliance.
He chose the latter and soon realized that he was doing very well, reaching all the goals set for him, and something else.
“They called me for my evaluation and told me that I was doing well and that I was ready to receive the most productive raise they could give me,” he says. I was expecting a big leap forward, but when it hit £ 250. It was the most productive raise they can offer. “
This is the insult that Paul left the next day. It’s much more ambitious than that, he said, still bristling with the memory.
He returned to Cardiff in 1987 and returned to live with his father in Rhiwbina, where he took an assignment with Chris James Insurance. Typical of Paul’s approach to paintings, he arrived early and left late at night, deciding that one day he would be allowed to run his own branch.
Eventually, he was asked to cover the Aberdare workplace for two weeks, which “blew,” he says. So much so that they asked him to stay there, and in the end he found himself in the rhythm of a workplace, just as he had dreamed of.
After transforming this office, he sent it to another and then another. Paul gained a reputation as a convenience store – his love of painting long hours and solving disorders at his own pace.
“It was very difficult, it was a great pressure, but I worked hard, I led and it seemed like it was going well,” he says.
“It is simply the determination to do whatever it takes. I got here and did the first thing I had to do. I would say “let’s get organized” and I would paint at my own pace to get there. “
Then, at the age of 21, she invited him to move to London, where he earned a turnover of 50 million pounds from 8 offices and the youngest of 30 other regional managers.
But in 1990, things changed when his stepmother Sue, who was a “real mother”, died of MS. A few months later, her life insurance arrived in the mail, giving Paul the opportunity to still realize her potential.
“My father called me and said he had just won a check for £ 100,000 in the mail,” says Paul. “It was life insurance for Sue. You didn’t forget to take out the policy, but at one point you will need to have checked the box that says take £ 10 a month.
“So I said to Dad, ‘Why don’t you give me the cash to start my own business? I’m incredibly smart about it. “
His father wasn’t sure at first. “He said that business was business and the circle of relatives was the circle of relatives and that he didn’t need to fight about it,” Paul continues. “But despite everything he said, ‘Write me a business plan. ‘ He rejected the first attempt and the moment, but the third agreed. “
In August 1ninenine1 Paul opened Motaquote in Birchgrove, Cardiff, while still living in London. He drove to Cardiff each and every day, brutal nutrition that required him to leave at five a. m. every morning and not come home until after nine at night. It took six months before Paul was able to move and live closer to Cardiff and bought a position at Llantwit Major.
In 12 months he had returned a million pounds. Two years later, her father came on board. He soon followed a branch in Tonypandy, then Risca, then in 1997 Paul bought the first business from him.
Over the next decade, Paul set out to buy insurance agents in South Wales, taking over more than 15 corporations and creating the largest independent insurance broker in Wales, which grew to number 60 in the UK. He had soon bought everything he could in Wales and had billed 30 million pounds.
In 2004, Motaquote replaced his call to Protectagroup Ltd and Paul sold his business to Callum Capital Ventures, a component of Towergate Insurance Group, for £ 20 million. Paul first of all stayed as a consultant, but left after a few years, as he took over his life.
“I ran all the time,” he says. “I missed seeing the kids. I was on a laptop, at an assembly or on a call. “
At the time, he was living on the outskirts of Cowbridge with his then-wife Dee and 4 young men: Molly, Max, Aaran and Bobby.
During this time, he purchased Radio Cabs Taxi Company in Bridgend, but never worked for the company, having held various consulting positions and eventually ran nearly 20 companies.
The recommendation suited Paul: “It doesn’t matter if you sell donuts or widgets, corporate governance is corporate governance,” he explains.
“Someone has to be there and say that someone has to make a resolution. I say that it is better to make a bad resolution rather than no resolution at all. At least if you’re making a bad resolution, you started from where you were and you know what you deserve to have done. “
Paul speaks with the clinical detachment of a businessman and unshakable, unshakable confidence. “I didn’t make the right decisions, but I acted and acted fast,” he says when asked where he came from.
“People lose confidence in themselves if they don’t see anything.
“The only way I can see is that it may be better to take action. The penny fell very early because he had so much joy in life compared to young people aged 19 and 20 at the most. they have been forced to make decisions.
“I just grew up with it. It is not an exact science. Many decisions are based on accepting as true with, waiting for someone to say, “It’s the right thing to do. “
“Over the years, good fortune has generated good fortune and, more importantly, trust,” says Paul, who does not describe good fortune through the amount of money he earns, but admits that he surely will. It has given him and his family a confident quality. of life.
Not everyone, for example, will shell out £ 10,000 for a racehorse Postmaster who later competed in the 2012 Grand National.
It was in 2010 that Paul was invited to the hit reality TV show The Secret Millionaire, where he made it his project to help families in need, fueled in component through his own complicated upbringing. But after the emotionally charged joy of donating £ 65,000 to smart causes, Paul discovered that the joy had had an effect on his own family.
The workaholic said he was moved to spend more quality time with his wife and 4 children. “It was difficult to film because of all those emotions,” he said in 2010. “Even though I was a caregiver as a kid, I never looked back and it had made me need to succeed until my childhood. “
One of his main considerations is the fact that his own children had been raised with swimming pools, helicopters and vacations in Sandy Lane, Barbados, and that “it is not a real life. “
Dee, now his ex-wife, said at the time: “I haven’t forgotten to tell him from the moment we met, ‘Let’s finish this time and it will be so much better. “He has been saying that for 14 years. The plan is to move on to the horses. My daughter is racing so we have some horses. I think there are 17. We don’t do anything by halves.
“Paul is more on the racehorse side, but if we go big and have a yard, a stallion and a stable, I am not in a position to do it myself. I give him 3 or 4 years. Array. “
2010 has been a “big one” for Paul, who is already president of the Cardiff Devils. Initially, anything he took as a way to “get the kids involved” temporarily turned into another business opportunity: the then manager went bankrupt and emigrated, so Paul decided to buy the club. It would be his “toughest business challenge,” he says.
“[It was] a poorly managed operation, running out of cash – in fact, I found myself holding the baby,” he says.
“I did it at first because I was sorry for the staff, the fans and the history of the club, which I think means a lot to many. I tried to apply business logic to what I was doing. and it didn’t go well.
“I sold the club in 2014 to a Canadian consortium and at its peak we were almost on the verge of calling, but the game is so fickle, it’s not because you spend more cash that this promises success. Ice cream earnings temporarily plummet despite the number of stars you have on your team; it is definitely what I would call a lottery investment.
Despite all the hardships she endured at the helm, there was one huge advantage that came out of it: ice hockey captured the imagination of her 3 children. His youngest son, Bobby, now plays for England’s U-15 program.
Paul never stood still, he had also added Dragon Taxis in Newport to his portfolio and the concept of combining his two taxi corporations temporarily followed. In 2012, he met another entrepreneur, Nathan Bowles, and together they created Veezu.
Within 3 years they were making over £ 20 million and Veezu is the UK’s leading personal hire company with several thousand drivers across the country.
Paul resigned as managing director in 2017 to focus more on his youth and sold most of his justice in late 2019. He has since remarried and had ‘semi-retirement’ plans: Paul’s retirement concept did not it is quite the same as maximum number of people.
Did you know we’re offering a free email newsletter service?
Every North Wales Live newsletter brings the latest breaking news, what happens on occasions and conversation issues right to your inbox.
For more information on how and why to subscribe, click here, click here.
However, now he has at least found the time to start a small real estate business, Ragan Property Ltd, in partnership with his two older children and his wife Sarah.
It is also entering the global festival with its Climax Promotions corporate promotions, the coronavirus pandemic has spilled bloodless water on this corporation for the time being.
His greatest concentration today, outside the doors of his circle of relatives, is his role as CEO of the Equine Register at Rendcomb, right outside in Cheltenham. It’s not exactly what he planned in 2010, yet despite everything, he has an equine business: his company manages knowledge in the central equine knowledge base and allows other people to digitally preserve their data. horse and his passport.
Possibly it would have taken a global pandemic to force Paul to slow down despite everything – he can’t even make it to his local golf course in Southerndown to sneak in due to lockdown restrictions at point 4.
For now, he will have to be content with settling into his new home in Cowbridge with Sarah and the latest addition to his circle of relatives: a new dog.
To comment on this story, please use the comment segment above.