One is a judge on the most popular business reality show on TV. The other has this week announced his firm has been sold for a small fortune.
It leaves entrepreneurs Tim Campbell and Dean Forbes uniquely qualified to appear on The Apprentice - You’re Fired later today.
Tim was the first-ever winner of the parent show, The Apprentice, in 2005. Dean is the CEO at software firm Forterro. The pair are long-term friends from humble beginnings who have been on journeys familiar to millions of young entrepreneurs hoping to make their way in the game.
“If you haven't had an awful lot, there's less to risk,” said Campbell, “For me coming up, I had nothing to lose. So if I went into a room and everyone else there was a Big Cheese, my view was: ‘If they kick me out and kick me out.’
“But I could always be myself and that has taken me to where I am now.”
East Londoner Tim, 44, currently sits alongside Alan Sugar and Baroness (Karren) Brady on BBC1 every Thursday night, hunting for the latest winner of £250,000 for a new business.
When he triumphed, 17 years ago, he landed a £100,000-a-year job with Lord Sugar’s firm Amstrad.
Tim left two years later to found the Bright Ideas Trust, a charity to help young people to set up their own businesses.
There he met Forbes with both conquering their initial fears that two talented young Black men could be swallowed up by the corporate machine.
“Firstly, you're grateful just to be in those spaces because you previously didn’t even know that they existed,” Tim added.
“Then, when you're in there, you realize: ‘Well, actually, I’m doing alright! This Imposter Syndrome thing, I don't have to worry about it!
“‘I’m not doing something that's weird or unusual, or losing myself or selling myself out. I'm just actually working really hard.’
“My journey was working for the public sector. I went into TV after that, then set up my own foundation to help young people start their own companies.
“Then I joined a couple of organisations to give advice to their boards. Now I’m part of a trading company focused on setting up a new venture in Africa.
“I remember once Dean told me: ‘There's no limit to what I can achieve. So why would I slow down now?’ And it’s true.”
Dean is just as driven, having transformed the fortunes of a string of enterprise software companies over the course of his 20-year career.
He was named last year alongside Marcus Rashford, Sir Lenny Henry and Dame Sharon White in a list of the UK’s most influential Black people across a range of industries including business, politics, technology and science.
The firm he sold this week, Forterro, is a European provider of software to nearly 8,000 mid-market manufacturing and production companies.
It was snapped up by Partners Group on Tuesday. Dean said in a statement this week: “The final piece of the puzzle was partnering with an investor that would share this vision with us. Forterro has been on an incredible journey.”
Dean’s foundation, the Forbes Family Group, provides investment and development support to young people and entrepreneurs from underrepresented backgrounds.
“God has put me in an amazing position,” he said. “A position to do a lot of good for as many other people as I can - and that is a blessing. I’ve accepted it. It's exhausting. It's tiring, frustrating sometimes, but in comparison to the rest of the world, I'm doing better than nearly everybody.
“The thing I find hardest as a leader - either of the household, as a parent, at work or in the community - is that you educate people to look to you for solutions and answers.
“So, for example, there are nearly 2000 people at my company and, when things go really badly, it ends up on my desk.
“When stuff is going really badly at home, everyone calls me!
“So that’s the thing I find the hardest - trying to be the person that everybody expects, because I don't want to let them down. Come 10pm you just think: ‘I just want to watch Succession so that it can numb my brain!”
The biggest challenge for both Tim and Dean is striking a work-life balance. Dad-of-three Dean, married to wife Danielle, said “I’m incredibly disciplined.
“I love my work and I love my family. Because I'm so driven, I can get carried away and just end up trying to conquer the world from a website.
“So I have to be disciplined and set times when I'm going to be a dad and a husband. Not a CEO or chairman or anything else.
“Because my family makes sacrifices too. My wife had to deal with three kids under 15 months at one stage.
“She’s had long periods of me traveling and being away with work. She's had to deal with my mood swings when we've lost a deal or the teams are performing.
“So the least I can do is, when I can, be totally present and totally engaged.”
Campbell agrees: “When you find that thing, work-wise, that’s your passion it is quite easy to get lost in it. But I'm very fortunate that Jasmine, who I've been with for 24 years now, understands that if I didn't have that passion and purpose, I wouldn't be the man she fell in love with and stayed with all this time.
“But like Dean says, I need the discipline to be able to afford the time to protect what is most precious to me - my family.
“Just so I don't lose out on those positive moments of the school play, the gold medal for my son, or the football match they’ve been battered in and need a hug after.
“It is hard sometimes. When you've got to be away, you travel a huge amount. You’ve got reports, you've got investors. It’s very easy to think: ‘They can wait, I can come back to it next week’.
“But sometimes you have to press the button and be disciplined. That results in people knowing they can trust you.”
Both men point to last year’s European Championship Final to make their point that as high-profile Black figures, they are harshly judged when they don’t deliver.
Three of England’s Black footballers, Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka - were racially abused on social media and taunted at stadiums around the country after they missed penalties in the defeat at Wembley to Italy.
“When we watched the Black footballers miss the penalties, I don't think there was a person of colour watching that, who was not expecting the fallout afterwards,” said Tim.
“Because sometimes we walk into rooms and we know we have to perform exceptionally well. That's our own standard.
“But it's also the standard of people who may be watching and asking questions of us. I don’t take that responsibility on but I’m aware that it’s there.
“So for me, in order to perform really well I make sure I exceed expectations. I don't want to just meet them. I want to smash them out of the park so that you can’t even ask the question.
“And that's a good thing sometimes but it also can be a great pressure because there's a lot of stuff. I need it now because I get buzz and drive. If it's not hard. I don’t really want to do it because you're not really testing me.”
