Alex Turner meets MARK ELLIS, chairman of Ellis Whittam in Chester

ENTREPRENEURS invariably have to take a risk when they go it alone, to step outside of their comfort zone.

But it isn’t often that their comfort zone is quite as comfortable as the one Mark Ellis left.

In his mid-30s he was head of employment law and equity partner at North West commercial solicitors Aaron and Partners, earning what he described as “a really good income”.

But it wasn’t what he wanted.

“I wasn’t happy,” he said. “You have got to ask yourself ‘why are you doing it?’ It’s one life. I had to do something about it, I had to leave. It has been incredibly hard work.

“The work and graft and blood, sweat and tears – you have to be passionate about it.

“I gave up my equity partnership, re-mortgaged everything I had, and borrowed as much money as I could – and set up the business.”

This wasn’t the first time he had made a difficult, unattractive career decision. The Calday Grammar pupil had graduated from Coventry with a law degree – despite “hating every moment of it” – but after just one week at Chester Law College, he was bored and quit.

“I went to London, got on a post-graduate course, marketing, export marketing and French – I had the time of my life,” said Ellis. “It was fresh, real and business.

“As part of the course we set up and ran our own market research company.

“We had phenomenal success, we ended up making quite a lot of profit, which the college was quite embarrassed about, and we persuaded the college to pay us a dividend.”

He started work at a marketing consultancy in Bath, spending two years putting together marketing plans for a range of firms, including a law firm.

But, spurred on by seeing his contemporaries qualifying and doing well, he decided he wanted to have a qualification.

He returned to Chester, “with a different mindset”, passed his law exams and began his career as a trainee solicitor – but did not suppress his entrepreneurial leanings.

“When I was a trainee, I set up and ran a beauty product and treatment business, called O-lys,” he said. “I had met a guy who run a photography business and a girl who ran a beauty practice, who had what seemed to be a unique treatment using light therapy.

“I would work there at lunch and after work, and at weekends I would go to beauty shows and man the stand.

“It was a super experience. I ended up selling my shares when an investor bought the business. I don’t think there were many trainee solicitors doing that at the time.”

Ellis still had a “burning desire” to be an entrepreneur and continued to cast around for the right opportunity, the right idea, which saw him create a website selling unusual gifts.

He said: “I thought that men are terrible at buying presents but women love getting them. This was in the middle of the dotcom revolution. I set up stuff4her.com – I built the site and sourced product.

“The aim was to get funding and grow very quickly and provide unique gifts for men to give women, and to reverse the proposition as well.

“But no sooner had I completed the website we had the crash so I did not press ahead with that idea.”

He remained restless, frustrated by the slow pace of change in the legal sector and still on the lookout for his entrepreneurial break.

Sat at the top of Beeston Castle, he had his eureka moment.

“I thought ‘my business is law’. The key to success is not to necessarily come up with something brand new but simply to take something and do it much better.

“I had seen businesses like Peninsula and Citation start targeting my clients in the law firm with their proposition of ‘let’s fix the fee and cover the risk’. Charging an hourly rate meant that no business could budget for my services.

“The proposition seemed like a good one. The problem was that the current providers were not delivering a good quality service.

“I decided to create a business support business that deals with regulatory compliance for business but crucially delivers quality, quality, quality. That’s how it started and how we differentiate ourselves.”

Ellis Whittam – he used the surname of one of his first employees to give the company the sound of a professional firm – began operating from a loft conversion in central Chester, before moving first to a larger loft conversion, then to its current home in the old Home Farm on the Grosvenor Estate in Aldford.

The firm provides a range of employment law, HR, health and safety and related business support services, with Ellis describing the proposition as “certainty of cost and total support and peace of mind”.

He added: “The regulatory compliance sector is probably one of the fastest-growing sectors in the UK.

“There are many players in this marketplace now. We are not reinventing the wheel – but we are focusing on quality and our aim is to be the UK’s quality provider of fixed fee support services.

“We have grown to a business which supports about 12,000 organisations with about 1,500 retained clients.

“What we have seen over the last few years has been a flight to quality. People have been more concerned about getting a quality service that’s practical. They are looking for fair value, not necessarily the cheapest.”

Ellis Whittam’s fast growth has seen it win business all over the country and its client portfolio includes Toni & Guy, Aston Martin and the businesses of TV Dragon Peter Jones.

Its growth has been uninhibited by the recession which meant that by the end of 2009 the business had reached a crossroads.

He said: “I sat down and thought ‘what do I do with this business?’. Although I am entrepreneurial, I’m a solicitor by training.”

Ellis brought in Deven Thakrar, an experienced senior executive at businesses including Hays and RAC, and went through a strategic exercise.

The result was Mr Thakrar became chief executive to drive forward a strategy of exponential growth.

“In the last year we have put a full operating board in place and we are thinking and planning like a business that is two or three times our size,” said Ellis.

“We have invested this year in infrastructure, capital expenditure, IT, premises and people, so we have the base in place to take advantage of the market opportunities that exist.”

He remains committed to the key tenets of his business idea – a quality service delivered by happy staff.

“For me, right from the outset, the key was about creating a very happy work environment,” he said.

“I had been inspired by Richard Branson’s autobiography – he said the most important asset you can have is the people who work for your business. I have never forgotten that.

“If the people are genuinely happy and engaged, they will deliver inspirational service. If we do that, we will stand out in the market.”

Keeping his 100-strong workforce content – in the last staff survey 93% said they were happy or very happy, a score which was only beaten by the number of clients who said they would recommend the firm to another business – is done through a range of measures, from pensions and healthcare to staff parties and providing quality coffee and a proper machine to make it with.

But the camaraderie can have a downside, with Ellis still licking his wounds from being knocked out of the company’s table football competition. Perhaps he was distracted by the view out of the window in the activity room that lets you look across the Cheshire countryside.

You see, it’s a different kind of comfort zone these days.