Neil Clifford, the boss of Kurt Geiger, one of Britain’s most prominent footwear brands, started his career a world away from the glitz and glamour of fashion.
Growing up, the CEO failed almost all of his exams because of his dyslexia struggles. After leaving school with just one qualification in art, Clifford went to the job center and found work at a Fiat car dealership, where he was paid £25 ($33) a week.
“That was my first job in August ’83, so I suppose I've done all right,” Clifford told Fortune.
He’s done all right indeed: The now 57-year-old went from the car dealership and cleaning toilets for extra pocket money to running £330 million-a-year ($432 million) business Kurt Geiger—and has done so for more than two decades.
His career trajectory shifted gears after a friend got him an interview for Burton’s menswear at Debenhams in his hometown of Portsmouth.
“Suddenly, I was going from delivering paraffin to selling suits,” he remembers. “I realized at that point I was really good at selling stuff because I was able to convince people how wonderful they looked.”
It was there that Clifford got the big break that launched him into the high-flying world of fashion.
Clifford’s career-defining moment
A few months into working at his local department store, Clifford noticed that Burton’s then CEO and the founder of Topshop, Ralph Halpern, made a habit of walking the shop floor most Saturdays.
To stand out among the hundreds of other workers across the U.K., Clifford knew he had to seize this opportunity. His plan? He would muster the courage to pitch his ambitions directly to the boss.
He bided his time, waiting for the perfect moment to pounce—when his manager was away on holiday.
“I knew, right, if he comes in today, I have my speech all sorted in my head,” he remembers. “I knew that was a moment for me. It was a bit like if I was a footballer, brought on as a substitute and I had to take a penalty.”
“I had this half an hour opportunity to chat to the big, big, big, big boss,” he adds. “I knew I wanted to ask for advice, but also express my enthusiasm, express my ambition, my energy... So, yeah, it was a moment for me that I knew I had to perform.”
The advice that stuck with Clifford was "There's plenty of jobs, but you need to move to London. You're not going to make it in Portsmouth."
It was the push he needed to leave his sleepy hometown and embrace the hustle of the city.
Moving to London changed the course of Clifford’s career
“I applied for a job straight away that week in Woolwich,” Clifford recalls of the pivotal moment in his career. “I didn't know where Woolwich was, to be honest, but it had a London postcode.”
The role offered him the chance to manage his own boutique store instead of a concession stand within a department store—it was a big step up, and to his surprise, he was offered the job straight away.
“I was the only applicant,” he laughs. “No one else applied for the job because, as it transpired, Woolwich in ’86 was a bit of a rough old joint.”
And just like that, Clifford swapped the safety of Portsmouth for one of the roughest parts of London and never looked back.
“All the staff were stealing, so I had to change all the staff,” he says, adding that it gave him the opportunity to turn the business around and make a name for himself.
By the end of the year, Clifford, who was only 19 years old at the time, says the store was the most profitable and best performing.
“I won this big award, Store Manager of the Year; I was earning £9,000 ($12,000) a year. I was the king.”
The experience set him on a quick path to success which saw Clifford bag promotion after promotion, before being poached by Kurt Geiger in 1996.
“In the end, within 18 months, I was managing the biggest store in the company in Bromley, with 40 staff, [turning over] £4 million [$5.2 million] pounds a year at 21—I was the youngest flagship store manager in the whole of the Burton group.”
Walmart CEO got his big break the same way
Like Clifford, Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon came from humble beginnings. He started his career in the company’s warehouses in the summer of 1984, at the age of 17.
Since then, he’s scaled the retail giant’s ranks from unloading trailers for $6.50 an hour to becoming the company’s youngest CEO since its founder Sam Walton—with a $25 million salary to show for it.
He, too, got his big break by stepping up and making his mark when his boss was on vacation.
“One of the reasons that I got the opportunities that I got was that I would raise my hand when my boss was out of town and he or she was visiting stores or something,” McMillon recently revealed.
“I then put myself in an environment where I became a low-risk promotion because people had already seen me do the job.”
