42 Degrees - Business from a different angle

January is a depressing month for most of us, but not for Brett Beresford. It was on a January evening of this year that the former forklift truck salesman saw a ten-year-old dream finally come true – with the help of a brush with mortality.

It was then that the referee blew his whistle to start the first game of the first tournament at Beresford's Soccer Village, a five-a-side football complex boasting six pitches, bars, grandstand and floodlighting at a converted equestrian centre in Rochdale, Lancashire.

But there was little cheering or self-congratulation on a job well done. "I suppose it was a moving moment," says Beresford. "But my business partner and brother-in-law Colin Smith and I were so busy that we had no time to really think about what we were feeling. We were still painting and preparing the ground right up to an hour before people started arriving."

The realities of running his own business for the first time mean that anxiety is likely to be Beresford's dominant emotion for some time to come. "I've had to take a dip in salary, I've remortgaged my house and I'm skint," he laughs. "But we've done our research and there is nothing like this within an hour's drive, so we are confident that if we work hard, we will succeed."

Beresford recalls very clearly the moment when the idea of an indoor soccer centre first occurred to him. He had played 11-a-side amateur football – as an attacker in the Eric Cantona/Teddy Sheringham mould – since he was 16. But in 1996 he injured his cruciate ligament. "I started to play five-a-side indoor games where there was less sliding and crunch tackling and the surface was truer," he says.

He played on an indoor cricket pitch that was little more than carpet and the facilities were frankly primitive. "But they were charging £32 per half hour game, they had about ten a night and they were always full," says Beresford. "It seemed like a great business to me."

The ground closed in 1999, when the site was sold for redevelopment. It was the obvious opportunity for Beresford to start up his own soccer business. But, despite running the idea over and over in his head, he remained in his day job. "I had left school with four GCSEs and was making some real progress in my career as a salesman, so I stuck at it."

Then, less than a year later, Dave Whelan, entrepreneurial chairman of Wigan rugby and soccer clubs, opened a JJB Sports soccer centre, with 20 purpose-built five-a-side pitches in Manchester, 14 miles away. It was another spur to action. "I thought it was fantastic. But my wife and I were planning a family, so once again I stayed in my job," says Beresford.

Ironically, in the end it was severe illness that was to provide the impetus to go into business. Three years down the line, Beresford's wife, Emma, developed Hodgkin's Lymphoma, a form of cancer. "She went through hell. But, after ten fraught months of intensive treatment, she was given the all clear," says Beresford. "In the meanwhile I had been in hospital with kidney stones, which were incredibly painful."

That was his 'Eureka' moment. "It was then that I realised life is not a dress rehearsal," he explains. "It's fragile and temporary and the only one you'll have. You have to go for what you want or you will be the loser."

He decided to start researching the feasibility of a children's play centre. "I visited Birchinley Manor, a local equestrian centre, which had fifty acres of land, to talk about the possibility of some kind of joint venture. They suggested I come back in a few months."

In the meantime the site was sold. So Beresford and Smith approached the new owners with proposals to turn the existing arena into indoor soccer pitches.

Much to his amazement, they agreed and granted the pair a seven-year lease. "We envisaged an upmarket five-a-side centre with synthetic pitches – the same as Real Madrid's training ground – plus stadium seating, sound system, electronic scoring, commentary box and a bar and grill with a view of the pitch."

Beresford hopes that his soccer centre will be profitable in the first year and that he will have paid off all borrowings within four. "I expect to make a small wage for the first couple of years. But I really do believe in the commercial potential of what we are doing and it is something I love," he exclaims. "It has given me the chance to create my own life in the way that I want it. It's a fantastic opportunity."