The leading lights in Hull’s rugby league scene have united to reveal what drove them to the top of their games to deliver success.
Adam Pearson and Neil Hudgell head up Hull FC and Hull KR, and came together as part of Humber Business Week.
A union masterminded by Paul Sewell as the festival’s co-founder successfully added an Elevenses chat show element to the programme, the wide-ranging interview took in roots, music and mutual business interests in their Tribal sports bars.
Gentle rivalry, absolute respect and a great deal of camaraderie was clear - with a slight ribbing guaranteed - be it fashion or the odd faux pas in their highly visible sporting exploits.
Brought up by his grandparents in a north Hull pre-fab, Mr Hudgell told how he built his eponymous law firm that has allowed him to invest time and money in KR.
He worked for Max Gold, who he described as “a very very kind man, but not the greatest businessman,” with his practice suffering financially.
He took three offices, the staff and the caseload on. “I admire anyone who starts a business from phase one,” he said. “I started with 800 clients, it was an opportunity, the right place at the right time.
“I was on the estate where the clients were, rather than in Parliament Street where most of the lawyers were. All of north Hull was having a major housing regeneration and it brought a lot of people in with a lot of injuries.”
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He specialised in personal injury, with a guiding principle at the fore. “There’s always someone who knows the law better than you, it can be pretty intimidating, but earning the client's confidence was always the biggest thing for me,” he said.
Successful major advertising campaigns helped propel it forward, with offices established in Leeds, London and then Manchester.
Now he’s behind the righting “one of the great scandals” as Mr Pearson described it - the Post Office Horizon IT fiasco.
“It started as one client, and increased, it was such a close-knit group of people, 700 altogether,” Mr Hudgell said. “It went from one to five, to 15, now the best part of 200 clients, we have two people working full time talking to them.”
Mr Pearson was from a comfortable family in Leeds, but the three day week saw his father lose his business and he headed out to the Middle East when he was 13. His mum followed when he was 17, and he actually spent a year in Hull, before London, and Marks and Spencer, called.
“I forced myself to be strong, to be driven,” he said. “If you want to be a success you have to make tough calls and be driven, and it took me until I was 21. I coached myself to be stronger, and I was incredibly driven at 21, obsessed with work.
M&S gave him the “discipline and business training in retail, marketing and buying,” he said, backing his shaper to topple rival John Lewis with smart leadership in the coming years.
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He wound up back in West Yorkshire as chief executive of football club Leeds United, going on to buy Hull City from the administrator for £235,000 after taking the club to the cusp of European glory.
“We’d just played Real Madrid, I borrowed £1 million, paid the £235,000, opened the gates at Boothferry Park , and it was a great seven years,” he recalled.
“When you buy a different club your allegiance changes, your mortgage is on it. It is a huge responsibility. The performance on the pitch translates to how you feel. You know you have to win to keep everyone happy. It is a necessity.
“There’s no better buzz than winning at sport, it is an unbelievable feeling. I looked around after Wembley in 2016 [EFL Championship Play-Off final win] and everyone was so happy . No-one wants to be unpopular and when the fans aren’t with you it hurts.”
This brought Mr Hudgell to touch on social media, and the abuse online.
“Everyone is affected by reading it,”he said. “I don’t read it any more, it would churn me up when I looked at it, then I’d look at who wrote it and think they probably didn’t get out of bed for many a day.”
And he remains at KR despite announcing he was stepping down, with Mr Pearson approaching a decade at FC.
“I have hung on, it is so important,” he said, especially through the Covid period. “At a funeral, so often it is red and white or black and white flowers on the coffin. It is that generational thing. It is a really heavy responsibility. Very easy to get into, very difficult to extract yourself.”
The pair are investing together on projects this summer, and they see the two clubs as benefiting one another - even if there’s some argument about the kingpin.
“Hull has a national profile, both clubs are positive, both financially stable and both are competitive in a difficult sport,” Mr Pearson said. “ We have a lot to be proud of, but at the end of the day we are bigger!”
Mr Hudgell, acknowledged by Mr Pearson as the more measured of the two, said: “I was brought up when both sides were at the pinnacle of the game, first and second, first and second, and we fed off each other. For us it is now how we respond to what Adam has achieved. I knew when he came in Adam would win something. He’s a professional sportsperson, I run a business and do the sport on the side, it is always difficult to keep up. “He is not from Hull, but he understands Hull in terms of the brand. You go to Australia and Hull KR is a massive brand. Equally the two help each other, if one wasn’t there the other would struggle.”
They are doing a number of investments together, building on what they have achieved with the Tribal sports bar brand.
So what have they learned about themselves?
“I don’t take time to think about things - I’m trying to learn to take more time - I can be impulsive but sometimes that gut instinct is the right one,” Mr Pearson told Mr Sewell and a select audience in person at Aura, while streamed online.
“My success comes from a massive fear of failure and I have also had to live with imposter syndrome. I’m obsessed with the fear of failure and sport heightens that, going through the machinations of defeat or victory. My father went bust at 13, everything went from being comfortable to difficult. Fear of failure drives me every day.”
Asked what the one thing he'd urge others to do, he added: “Have the courage of conviction when you think the timing is right. When Leeds were in the semi-finals of the Champions League I decided to buy Hull City. Everyone thought I was mad but I knew it was time to make my own mark. At some point you have to take a calculated risk.”
Recognising a “sharp” character in Mr Pearson, Mr Hudgell said: “I was very insular, lacking in confidence, I used to hate doing advocacy,” he said of his early years, telling how his grandparents instilled discipline as they were “religious on ethics and morality, as straight as they come”. He added: “If you have passion and drive we will always succeed. You have got to do what you enjoy and you will find something that will become life-long and sustainable, with the real basics in place.”
Up next: Steph McGovern
The woman who fronted the first national live TV show to be broadcast in Leeds will tell a Humber Business Week audience of the need for more industries – and the government – to invest in the north.
Steph McGovern will use the platform presented by the Elevenses series of interviews to highlight the “desperate need” for levelling up and to increase the amount of public investment in northern towns and cities.
Middlesbrough-born Ms McGovern, who rose to fame as a business journalist with the BBC, was due to launch her Packed Lunch day time magazine show from Channel 4’s new studios in Leeds last April when the pandemic forced a rethink.
In Tuesday's interview with Paul Sewell, founder of Humber Business Week and chair of Sewell Group, she is expected to talk about the challenge of presenting the show from her kitchen for eight weeks.
Ms McGovern has also indicated that she plans to talk about the need for the education system to be more in tune with the world of work and to plan vocational training and business visits into the curriculum.
Mr Sewell said: “I’ll be asking about the issues around presenting a live TV show from your kitchen not long after you’ve had a baby and about Steph’s famous interview with Donald Trump.
“But above all else we’re looking for some strong business messages that people can take away with them so I’ll be asking what sort of things she learned from visiting hundreds of businesses during her time at the BBC”.
Filmed at Hull’s Aura Innovation Centre with a live audience of invited guests, the interview will be streamed at 11am and will not be repeated. To register click here: