COULD ENTREPRENEURSHIP BE GENETIC?

REFUSING THE BANK OF MUM AND DAD, ASPIRING TO THEIR OWN

And

These Siblings Are Doing It For Themselves

Success breeds success, as they say, but could entrepreneurship really be passed on through genes? It depends on nature as well as nurture. Personality traits can be passed on through your parents’ DNA but the external world also plays a part in the kind of personality you develop.

A Kings College London study investigated the behavioural and molecular genetics of entrepreneurship. In short, they found that 37-48% of the tendency to be an entrepreneur is genetic. They also found evidence that the tendency to have entrepreneurial personality traits such as extroversion and openness also has a genetic component.

Speaking to the son and daughter of a successful food manufacturer in Leicester proved to me this could certainly be true. It’s also interesting to look at the two separate paths each sibling took in life and how those paths lead them to entrepreneurship – if entrepreneurship could ever be a destination or a never-ending journey.

Privilege and money can be uncomfortable subjects when you’re talking to those who have it. It was refreshing to hear the owners of new sports, fitness, and leisure realm What A Goal in Hamilton admit that they didn’t need to work due to the wealth of their family. However, they’ve chosen to graft and make their own way in business.

The recreation centre has been crafted by brother and sister Kavita (34) and Mehul Patel (31), along with Kavita’s husband Jay Patel (38), who founded X-Train which he runs with his three sisters and staff members who helped shape the business.

The siblings also have a family of business owners. Their dad, Arun Patel, and two uncles founded Cofresh Snack Foods in 1974, a Leicesterbased manufacturer of savoury nibbles, and were running the company until last year when they chose to sell it on, coincidentally just before the pandemic sent the UK into lockdown. Kavita and Mehul keep their dad’s figures to themselves as they’re not theirs to share but they do say that the three brothers had a target in mind when they set up the business before considering its sale. Buyers had been interested in Cofresh but when the right investor company came along with a matching ethos, the brothers decided it was time.

Hitting their target and having spent 47 years

Words by Kerry Smith working in the business and missing out on precious time with their children, they decided to sell Cofresh in 2020 to Vibrant Foods, one of the largest South Asian food groups in Europe. Cofresh turned over £44.4m last year and now, under the Vibrant parent company, plans to turnover £100m in the next four years. The family now own a minority stake in Vibrant Foods.

On top of the undisclosed figure that the family received for the sale, Arun owns numerous properties earning income streams. He has even asked his children himself why they work so hard when they could easily have help from their family. Both siblings have their own children now and it’s important to Arun that they are a strong family unit. Kavita commented: “Knowing how hard he’s worked himself, dad wouldn’t want us to lose out on family time. That’s my dad’s biggest hang-up. He’s happy with what we’re doing and has always pushed us to work hard but he doesn’t want his grandchildren to miss out on family time with their parents.”

Kavita, Mehul and Jay this year opened the first completed section of the What A Goal leisure complex on October 4. Forming the business by themselves as much as possible was high on the agenda. Kavita, manifesting that those entrepreneurial traits of drive and determination that could have well been inherited from her father, explained: “We wanted to do this by ourselves otherwise we’d never learn anything and would never be able to get anywhere.”

Kavita, eager to develop her own business from a young age, had been working on a business plan to open her own nursery and soft play area since before attending university, whilst Jay built his own personal training business and Mehul worked in a managerial role at Cofresh. Once

Mehul began looking for another job after the sale of Cofresh, and while Jay was already looking for opportunities to grow his fitness establishment, the two decided to join forces to start a new gym. And when an ideal unit of space became available, Kavita seized the opportunity to create her dream soft play venue in combination with Jay and Mehul’s gym. Their dreams, ambitions, and skillsets eventually aligned amalgamating into what became the original concept of What A Goal.

What A Goal

What A Goal will open fully in January 2022 in the old Flip Out trampoline park venue in the Troon Industrial Park. The venue will offer a soft play area, gym, two five-a-side football pitches, two indoor cricket pitches, a beaty bar, a hairdressing salon, physiotherapy practice, and a sports bar called What A Shot. There’s currently no other place like it in Leicestershire. The soft play area is already off to a flying start with a full house every weekend meaning Jay is working almost 24/7 while still running his fitness studio X-Train as well as the What A Goal soft play area.

Parents can enjoy time out while their kids have fun too. Jay commented: “The most valuable thing these days is convenience. It’s massively important to be able to have your kids taken care of while you take care of yourself.” Rather than stand in the cold at the side of a football pitch, families can sit in the What A Shot sports bar with glass panelling to watch their child progress in football on 3G pitches approved by FIFA, or cricket with former first-class cricketer Anish Patel on standby as general manager. While there, they can also enjoy Indian style tapas, the more traditional sports bar food, and some more quirky offerings to be revealed.

In the beauty bar, parents can enjoy treatments while safe in the knowledge their children are in close proximity and visible at all times. What A Goal will also provide a crèche service for parents while they work out in the onsite gym, play cricket, eat, visit the barbers, or use any other What A Goal service.

It was important to the founders that local companies were used in the creation of What A Goal, and so they hired Scope Construction Ltd. Directors Maz and Paz Patel had heard of the venture through a friend and were keen to get on board. Once introduced, Kavita, Mehul and Jay were impressed with the company’s ethos of working locally and driving money back into the local economy.

Maz, who is co-project manager for What A Goal, commented: “We designed and rebuilt the What A Goal unit to bring the idea to life. I’ve never heard of a development like this before and it has been a big challenge for us but very exciting and I wanted to be a part of it straight away.

“We’ve worked with the owners to have the project completed within just nine months, whereas something like this would usually take around 18. We’ve been able to do this by using our trusted supply chain and very robust, meticulous planning. Plus, we’ve been focusing heavily on it as it’s our flagship project in a unit of 80,000sq ft.

“We only employ local contractors apart from one specialist company from Newcastle that installed some of the play equipment. From a risk perspective as well as an ethical one, we keep our sub-contractors local and I think it definitely mattered to Kavita, Mehul and Jay that we support local employment.

Scope has so far employed the help of 11 sub-contractors to bring What A Goal to life including Glenfield Electrical, Smyle Painting and Decorating, BP Plastering, Indigo Fitness, Climatise, Commercial Flooring, and NJR Electrical, and Durant Ltd and Fosse Contracts which provided the cricket and football fittings.

The trio of founders have each worked tirelessly to see this unique project come into fruition. Mum and dad of two children, Jay and Kavita have their schedules worked out to a T. Kavita does school runs and activity club runs each day with business admin and legal work towards the business in between and through the nights, while Jay continues to be a personal trainer working unsociable hours but dedicating Friday afternoons off to pick the kids up from school to spend more time with them, whilst also working in the soft play area on the weekends. Meanwhile, Mehul is the construction guy, arranging all architectural and structural work and spending much of his own time in the unit to complete work and installations himself. They’ve been determined to do it all from scratch, all by themselves, where possible.

The Family Business

Outgoing, chatty, laid back yet visibly passionate, Kavita’s personality traits may well have been inherited as well as moulded on her journey through life as the rest of us. Mehul on the other hand is quieter, sits back and observes, but is no less motivated. Showing a real enjoyment in the family business since a young age, could Mehul’s story in particular prove that entrepreneurial traits also be adopted simply by being around other entrepreneurs?

The brother and sister grew up watching not only their dad work hard, but also their mum who they say was practically single parenting while dad ran the business. They say it’s from her that they gained much of their work ethic. Their mum worked for Cofresh and Kavita recalls spending a lot of time with her on the job: “I would be in the car seat in the Transit van while she worked long hours. It was very tough on her working and doing the school runs too.”

The parents, however hard-working in their own ways, never put the burden of the family business on their children.

“There was never any pressure for us to join Cofresh,” Mehul told me. “It was never a hand-me-down.” Instead, it was something he found himself passionate about. His first delivery job for the family business was just two weeks after gaining his driving license at age 18 before studying business management at university, which he completed whilst still working at Cofresh. Once graduated, Mehul couldn’t wait to get back to full time work in the factory. Four months later, he became the manager of his very own Eat Real factory under the Cofresh umbrella, which was in the unit that the business originally started life.

Remembering her younger brother’s appetite to work for the family business, Kavita said: “Mehul was going on deliveries with dad since he was seven years old. He’d wake up at 4am on the summer holidays to go with dad and his brothers.”

Meanwhile, Kavita was more interested in the study of children. With a degree in child psychology, she went on to run and manage children’s nurseries but after two years in the field, Kavita didn’t want to continue in a nursey unless she owned one.

“I was always a proud daughter, but I was never interested in pursuing a career in the family business. I watched my dad and all these business people in my family and I knew that the business world was for me, I just leaned more towards child studies and education.”

Kavita’s business plan for her own nursey and soft play business was in the making for 15 years before she came across the opportunity to utilise it. While she went about taking care of all the groundworks of setting up on her own, she took a job in a behavioural school which was linked to one of Leicester’s juvenile detention centres where she worked with police officers and social workers, gaining experience in a variety of childhood settings.

Whilst Kavita was developing the skillset to someday develop her own business, her brother was working hard to develop the family business. Mehul worked at Cofresh for seven years progressing from the factory floor to running it, all the time knowing that it would one day come to an end when his dad and uncles sold the family business.

On when his dad broke the news that the day had come, Mehul told me: “It was quite exciting knowing that he was going into retirement after having worked so hard all his life but at the same time I was thinking ‘what do I do now?’ I’d never worked for anyone else before and there were never enough hours in the day for me as it was in the family business so I didn’t know if I could do a 9-5 job. I grew up in that factory, it was hard to walk away from.”

The pair eventually partnered up with Kavita’s husband Jay to form a new leisure concept.

How The Three Came Together

The day Jay missed a university exam was the day that would alter the path for all three of the What A Goal founders. He was studying technology at Leicester University: “In second year, I found myself in the gym all the time and one day I missed one of my exams because I was still in the gym – that’s when I realised I was on the wrong path.”

Before university, Jay was working as a sports coach. But studying computing because his family encouraged him that ‘coaching was more of a hobby’ wasn’t sitting right with him. He quit the course, packed his bags and combined travelling with work becoming a football conditioning coach in America and Australia. Upon his return home, he set up as a personal trainer in his own home gym with standard equipment bought from a catalogue. He then took it outdoors running training classes in local parks until he was able to rent a space at Nuffield Health exposing him to a large number of new clientele. A few more years of doing 30-40 PT sessions a day meant Jay had the funds to hire five employees and set up in his own dedicated studio in 2014. His company, X-Train has now been running for 13 years. It was here that he met Kavita – she was a client of his sister’s who also worked as a personal trainer at X-Train. Jay and Kavita married in 2012.

Wanting to expand X-Train during the same period that Mehul was deciding what to do with his future after leaving Cofresh, the pair joined forces and had their eye on the old Cofresh factory unit where their dad’s story began. Still owned by the family, the building was being leased to a franchisee of the popular Flip Out trampoline park brand, but the backspace of the building wasn’t being utilised. Kavita, Jay and Mehul were going to rent the space from the franchisee to create a combined gym and soft play centre, which was eventually put on hold due to the pandemic. During the subsequent lockdowns, the Flip Out branch unfortunately closed meaning that, while they were saddened by the loss, it was ‘luckily’ for Kavita, Jay and Mehul as the perfect opportunity presented itself to them. They could start an entirely new business on a whole new scale.

Kavita’s business plan was all ready to go, she knew all the companies she wanted to work with and had done all her background research. But, being in a prime location, the building was sought after, and Arun wasn’t about to give it away. They were to pitch their business plan to Arun’s pension company that the property was managed under, and pay the rent just as any of the other contenders had to.

Overcoming Hurdles

There were plenty of hurdles that could have thrown them off track. Jay said they’ve sought out the appropriate experts to support them along the way: “Just the health and safety side of the business alone would be enough to scare anyone away. Kavita already had a lot of experience in those areas when it came to children but if you make the right contacts to help you, all the formalities and insurances can be completed. And we’re still learning ourselves and getting people to assist us through it. Working as a personal trainer for so many years, I’ve made a lot of contacts, a lot who own their own businesses in all sorts of industries from construction to banking.

“Networking is extremely important to any businessowner. I was so shy at school and came out of my shell by working in America. Good communication comes down to practising talking to people – the more you do it the easier it gets.”

Despite the world returning to normal, What A Goal hasn’t been immune to the issues of Brexit and coronavirus. “With the way the country is at the moment,” Jay commented, “prices have gone up and there are lots of delays on materials, it’s all had an impact on our budget. We were worried if we’d still be able to start the business because we could see that we were going over budget. And when it’s come to maintenance and construction, it’s been difficult because if one person gets Covid and has to isolate, then others get it and it delays the project.”

Snatching the opportunity to get into the former Flip Out and former Cofresh unit meant there was little time for a detailed inspection of the property. There were many maintenance issues to be taken care of which meant going over budget again. Kavita said: “We’ve had to sort a lot of things out that we could have done without. We knew there were some issues but didn’t know how extreme they were. For a business like this, people take months and months to bring together a financial forecast, but we didn’t have that time because from April 2020 when the unit was vacant, it was all go. We couldn’t afford to take three months out to decide if we were going to go ahead with the business or not because there was a battle for the property. We’re doing things as we go sometimes and have lost out on things because buying things last minute means they’re more expensive, but we also have a lot of great contacts which have meant we’ve managed to get more effective prices on certain things.”

On top of logistical challenges, Jay is still also working full time at X-Train and working on What A Goal in the evenings and weekends. Kavita and Mehul have also spent all their time onsite. They say it’s a ‘temporary thing’ and that working onsite and behind the scenes seven days a week won’t always be their lifestyle. Their goal is to be able to franchise the business by 2023.

Working Together

“One question I’m always asked is how I work with my brother and husband every day,” Kavita said before interrupted by Jay. “How do we work with you more like?” The three have an admirable relationship, they clearly all get on well and by the sounds of it, have been there for each other through thick and thin.

Kavita answered: “We get along so well, and we all have our own individual areas that we deal with. We don’t step on each other’s toes; we trust each other and are there to support so there’s a little bit of each of us in each area of the business.

And Jay and I don’t take anything home with us.

“My brother and I have always been close, and we argue as siblings do but when one of us is hurting it affects us massively and we all come together. We work out our personal issues together as well as the business.”

The conversation moves quickly onto Mehul’s divorce three years ago – I get the impression this has been an ongoing, emotional battle for him but that he has come out the other side as stronger. He said: “The divorce helped me in a lot of ways. It can give you that push to do more, like a motivation. We separated three years ago and we have a four-year-old daughter so it has been hard work for me moving forwards with the business but when you put your heart and soul into something you can achieve success.”

They tell me that this interview has only been possible due to the help of Kavita and Mehul’s parents as well as having employed general manager Anish from the outset. Kavita commented: “My parents have our kids every weekend and my mum picks them up from nursery on certain days. We wouldn’t be able to do this without them. Not everyone has parents to look after their kids but if you have some pillars in your family and friends, ask for the help!

“We also put full management onsite from the beginning, which is why we’re able to sit here for a couple of hours because we know everything is being handled outside of these doors. Otherwise, we would be drawn into every single daily task. We’ve had to spend a little extra, but it saves in the long run because we’ve all grown together rather than hiring someone and having to train them up from scratch.”

The next generation of the Patel family is eager to open the entire What A Goal leisure complex mid-January 2022, with a “huge opening party” to be confirmed.