Garry Partington is the latest guest on BusinessCloud’s new Northern Leaders podcast.
The episode, which has been sponsored by Wildbrook Commercial Real Estate, interviews some of the names that were included in BusinessCloud’s 2024 Northern Leaders list.
You can listen to the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts; or watch the interview on YouTube.
Partington is the son of a Rochdale butcher, who went on become the CEO of Manchester-based consultancy Apadmi, which will turn over around £30m this year and an estimated £40m next.
During the interview, the self-confessed tech geek told host Chris Maguire that a brush with death was the catalyst for turning Apadmi from a lifestyle business into one with global aspirations.
Asked what the North meant to him he said: “I just love the North – I’m a Rochdale lad, born and bred. I’ve lived in the North most of my life. It’s just a great place for a lot of people to build businesses, work hard and try and make something for themselves.”
Partington said leadership was about trying to get people aligned on the same vision and strategy as you.
“It’s all really key to make people understand where you want to go and let them figure out how they’re going to get there,” he said. “It’s trying to keep everybody motivated behind that goal, and that’s what I see as my job.”
Explaining why he’s called Garry with two r’s, he said: “My Dad is called Barry with two r’s. My Dad’s brother was Harry with two r’s. And it all just followed through with that, Garry, Barry and Harry.”
Partington said he got his strong work ethic from his Dad.
He said: “He worked really hard all of his life. He was the kind of person that was up at 4am. He ran a butcher’s shop but had a little bit of the entrepreneurial side.
“That inspired me to want to work hard and I worked for my Dad from when I was a young age. Seeing him working six, seven days a week, 12 hours a day, instilled a work ethic in how I look at life.”
At the age of 10 he taught himself how to code on an ancient computer called a Commodore VIC-20.
In an effort to earn extra money to upgrade to an Amiga computer he took three jobs at the Egerton Arms in Rochdale, Tesco, and in his Dad’s butcher’s shop.
When he was 14 he built an entire game in a one-hour computer science lesson – but got into trouble because his teacher didn’t believe it was possible.
He went to Lancaster University to study computer science before landing a job as a software engineer at British Aerospace in London aged 21.
He used to get sent meat parcels from home and recalls one memorable breakfast in London’s Leicester Square with his Dad.
Garry Partington and Chris Maguire on the Northern Leaders podcast
“My Dad got us a croissant with egg and bacon on each, and a cup of coffee,” he recalled. “When the cashier told him how much it cost he went: ‘Do you offer bloody mortgages here as well to pay for it?’”
He returned back up North and got a job at a tech company called Teleca, where he worked with people of the stature of Paul Sherwood, who became CEO of Codethink, and Nick Stammer, who went on to start Mobica.
In 2000 he became CTO of EMCC Software but was made redundant in 2009 and went on to co-found Apadmi with Nick Black, Howard Simms and eventually Adam Fleming – and they became known as the Beatles.
The aim was to help people create apps to better engage with their customers and was financed on credit cards in the early days.
Apadmi started winning some big contracts with the likes of the BBC, Argos and the NHS.
However, when staff numbers reached 70 and turnover £2.5m, Partington realised Apadmi had become a lifestyle business until a near life-death experience changed everything.
“Howard (Simms) was away on holiday with his family in the Turks and Caicos Islands,” said Partington.
“He was on a horse and ran through some dirty water. He just had a little cut on his foot and got an infection.
“Next day he was flying home. His foot started swelling up a bit, and within a few days, he was really poorly in hospital.
“He ended up with MRSA and pneumonia. It was life and death. He was in a coma for a few days and the doctors were not very positive about his outlook.”
Eventually Simms came out of his coma – but the experience changed the direction of Apadmi.
“When I went in to see Howard, he was gaunt and very thin,” said Partington. “He’d lost so much weight. He could barely stand up, couldn’t walk around. It was just a real shock to see, and he just made us all think about things a bit differently.”
It was at this point that the founders came up with their Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) from Jim Collins’s book ‘Built to Last’.
The idea was to expand to 1,500 staff in five markets, in five years.
In 2022 Apadmi acquired Dutch firm The Mobile Company and a year later received a significant minority investment from private equity investor CBPE.
The Northern Leaders podcast is produced by What Media.
You can listen to the Northern Leaders podcast on Spotify; on Apple Podcasts; or on YouTube.