The journey’s more important than money – Poundland founder

In 2006 Mr Smith decided the time had come and he sold his final shares in the business for £250m but said it was a very tough decision.

“It was as though somebody had died when we sold,” he said.

“We used to know everybody’s name, we still had the first branch manager.

“The end result is money, but what’s more important is the journey you’ve been on and all the things you’ve done with different people.”

Mr Smith described how strange it felt to suddenly return to day-to-day life, where it was just him and his wife, without hundreds of staff to manage.

“I did retire for about two weeks, but within that two weeks, I was trying to tell my wife how to cook an egg and she was saying ‘I’ve cooked eggs all this time without you’.”

It was then that his wife told him to “get another job”, prompting him to set up his next company, a mortgage business.