My secret? Whenin business, fire before you aim
How going up against the establishment made Lloyd Dorfman such a global success
LLOYD DORFMAN never had a longterm plan. By his own admission, he “just did” and things came through. Now worth an estimated £550 million, it is an attitude that obviously paid off for the self-made businessman and philanthropist.
But Dorfman, 63, founder of Travelex, the world’s largest currency exchange business which marks its 40th anniversary this year, was not always one of the big players. As a young entrepreneur in a market dominated by large banks, he had to work seven days a week and persistently fight to re-open doors that were dismissively shut in his face. Despite being recognised for Travelex, of which he still owns a five per cent stake, Dorfman sees himself an entrepreneur, not a foreign exchange guru.
“People think I am a foreign exchange expert, but I am absolutely not,” he says. “I am just a builder of businesses. It just so happened that I decided to build that business. One man asked me what I thought was going to happen to the pound in the next few weeks… like I knew,” he laughs.
So was Dorfman — now chair of flexible office space company The Office Group and retail collection group Doddle — always ambitious, or just lucky? I have come to Dorfman’s central London office to find out. He walks into one of the ground-floor meeting rooms, confident, 6ft 3in,bespectacled and warm, if a little suspicious: “You never know how an interview is going to come out or what the tone will be until the thing appears.”
So what has been the secret of his success. “I just did,” he says. “It was ‘ready, fire, aim’ rather than ‘ready, aim, fire’.
“Can I produce the 40-year business plan that will show you, from bottom-left to top-right, how my one little bureau de change shop was going to become a global brand, a leader in its field? In the real world of building businesses, that is not how it happens.
“In truth, it has been a commercial venture, the like of which I never imagined. Today, I sit with governors of central banks and prime ministers and presidents and finance ministers and they all want Travelex in their airports. It’s been an amazing journey.” Even in conversation, it’s clear that Dorfman, who was made a CBE in 2008 for services to business and charity, has no structured method of thinking — indicative perhaps of his instinct-led way of doing business, and doing it so well.
“My mind works on a bit of a radar basis,” he concedes. “I do not think I would be very good at playing bridge. My wife persuaded me to take one lesson once. I spent two hours in that bridge lesson and thought: ‘I can’t focus on one thing like this for two hours’.”
Perhaps that is why, aged 24, he decided to leave his stable job in the City to set up a small foreign exchange bureau with a £25,000 loan from a family friend. Anticipating the arrival of tourists ahead of the 1977 Queen’s Silver Jubilee, Dorfman thought it would be a good idea to open his shop on Southamp- ton Row near the British Museum — despite foreign exchange then being an “industry dominated by some of the oldest and largest banks in the world — and there was already talk of a common European currency.”
So why would you start a moneychanging business then?
“Because sometimes you can think too hard about these things. Just do it and when you do it, stuff happens. I decided to give it a go.
“It was tough to break in. It was a time where the banks felt they had to provide every service and be the supermarket of financial services however small or big they were themselves.
“What I was looking to do was provide a money-changing service seven days a week. I was going to
My mind works like a radar, I’d be awful at playing bridge