Alistair Houghton meets MATT BULLAS, chief executive of Click Consult, in Hooton

MATT BULLAS can’t help going at 100mph – and that’s how he made the journey from shelf-stacker to award-winning business leader.

Today Bullas, 33, leads Click Consult, the Cheshire web development agency that he has grown from a one-man band to an award-winning firm employing 75 people.

He describes himself as a man with “a huge amount of drive”, and proudly tells the story of how he rose through the ranks at Safeway.

Bullas joined the chain at 17 and soon rose from shop-floor junior to a key role in its head office. But when Safeway was taken over by Morrisons and he faced redundancy, Bullas decided he should apply the passion he applied to his Safeway career to his own business.

“I was always restricted working for a large company like that,” he said.

“I remember one person saying the problem people had with me was that I was getting on the train and going at 100mph and leaving everyone else behind.

“They saw it as a negative. I saw it as a positive.”

Bullas went to school in the small Devon town of Cullompton.

“I’m not academic,” he said. “I didn’t get above a C in my GCSEs.

“I went to college for one year – a painful year. I left there and started working at Safeway.

“I started stacking shelves and worked around different parts of the store. I had a huge amount of drive. I was inspired by store management, so I worked my way into the management training scheme.”

After a six-month stint in Northern Ireland, Bullas did his management training at stores in the South West, becoming deputy manager at the Totnes store, Devon.

“I became deputy store manager at 19,” he said. “I was one of the youngest at that level in the group.

“I then got approached for a role working outside the stores, as a regional space and range manager.

“It was a prestigious role. I was looking after a store portfolio from Cornwall to Basingstoke, managing the allocation of floorspace.

“Retail people were telling me I could be the youngest supermarket manager in the South West. But this role was more appealing to me at that age – I got a company car.”

Bullas did that job for more than two years, before deciding it was time for a change.

“I’m the kind of person that does get bored quite quickly, fortunately or unfortunately,” he smiled.

“It became the same old stuff every day. So I started looking for roles in head office.”

Bullas took a project management role at Safeway’s base in Hayes, Middlesex, but was soon ready to move on again.

“It was a role I didn’t get on too well in,” he said. “I didn’t get on with the people I was working for. It was quite a frustrating time in my career.

“I took my initiative and saw that buying offered good progression and good experience. I found myself a junior buying role – it was almost a step back, but it offered progression.

“When I finished buying at Safeway, I was buying £160m of electronics and telecoms goods.”

In 2004, Safeway was bought by rival Morrisons. Bullas kept his job at first, overseeing the transition, but swiftly made plans for his future.

He said: “Even before I got my redundancy, I knew I wanted to start a company.”

And so he launched Planet Phonecards, a site that offers savings on international phone calls.

He said: “There were lots of people going into corner shops and buying phonecards. I had the idea of creating a website and getting rid of the physical cards.”

Bullas moved to Wirral, where his girlfriend lived, and got a small office in Heswall. Next, he had to learn the skills he needed to run a business.

“I’m not a technical person,” he said. “I couldn’t build the website.

“I had to go through the process of finding a company to build it.”

Planet Phonecards proved a success and was, at its peak, turning over £2,500 a day. It survives today, running alongside ClickConsult.

“There’s always going to be a market for phonecards,” said Bullas. “There are people who don’t have access to broadband or Skype.

“Planet is a brand in its own right. I’m never going to sell it. It’s a declining market, but there’s still a niche.”

To make Planet Phonecards work, Bullas had to delve into the mysteries of online marketing. And that gave him his big business idea.

“I had to learn the marketing side of things, and how to make this business work online,” he said.

“Other people were creating websites and saying ‘why am I not selling?’ So I had to get into the nitty- gritty of various ways of marketing.”

He focused on the pay-per-click model, where revenues are generated depending on how many times an advert or a link are clicked on. And, as he learned more, he realised his research had opened up another business opportunity.

“There’s got to be a chance for me to recycle what I’ve done for me for other businesses,” he said.

“So I started Click Consult, and built the website, and started advertising pay-per-click management.”

The business grew steadily. But as more agencies started to offer pay- per-click services, Click Consult had to diversify into other areas.

Bullas said: “If we didn’t do that, it was going to stand still, or go backwards. So we started to look at search engine optimisation (SEO).”

Bullas created the SEO Consult brand and recruited experts in SEO – the art of getting websites ranked as high as possible on search engines.

The move paid off – today SEO makes up some 80% of Click Consult’s business. The company also offers web design services.

For Bullas, the key to success in the ongoing economic downturn is to prove to clients that their investment in Click Consult’s services is paying results. The company has developed its own software, such as ClickTelliegence, to monitor web traffic.

“If you don’t deliver a return on investment, clients won’t deliver the spending,” said Bullas.

Web development is such a fast- moving industry that it is hard to predict what technologies will be all the rage in years to come. But, says Bullas, many firms have yet to get to grips with current trends.

He said: “There are a lot of traditional companies that haven’t yet invested in a good website. They don’t have sites that integrate with social media. There are big opportunities there.”

Bullas has largely handed over the day-to-day running of Click Consult, now based in Hooton, to his management team. He focuses instead on the firm’s strategic direction and growth plans.

That also allows him to work on other business ideas. He has built a portfolio of domain names and is now planning to see if he can build businesses around them.

“I’m an idea generator, and niche spotter,” he said. “The concepts are there and now I need to thrash out the business models.

“Click Consult is the big beast. It’s the core focus. I don’t want to lose sight of what’s happening here.”

Even outside the office, Bullas doesn’t believe in sitting still.

He and his wife, who have a four-year-old daughter, manage a property portfolio. Bullas is also a Manchester United season ticket holder, and regularly visits the gym – “I believe that you need a healthy body and a healthy mind,” he says.

To that end, he eschews the long- hours culture, leaving work at a reasonable hour so he can spend time with his family. But he can never truly leave work behind.

“I’m not a 12-hour-a-day workaholic,” he said. “But I’m always checking emails.

“My BlackBerry is the bane of my life, even when I’m on holiday. It’s very difficult for me to switch off completely.”