You’ve worked with many business owners on BBC2’s The Fixer, where you set out to save family businesses, and Channel 5’s The Hotel Inspector, where you tackle poorly run hotel businesses. What are the most common mistakes?
I get irritated by people who don’t admit to me that they don’t understand their own figures. Women have such number blindness. I’m generalising – men have it too – but I meet a lot of women who say “I can’t understand it”. Take the bridal boutique from the first series of The Fixer [ Courtyard Bridalwear in Kettering , Northamptonshire]. That woman had been running her shop for years and didn’t understand her profit and loss sheet. But the business has gone from strength to strength since the show.
What has surprised you most?
It astonishes me how deluded some people are. I know that most of us don’t like criticism, but deep down we know when we’re not doing the best job at something. I’m always amazed that we manage to cast people [in my shows] that are self-deluded to an astounding degree, so much that it makes it quite difficult to work with them.
Which businesses stand out?
I had a positive impact on this hotel in Ramsgate [The Albion Hotel, featured in The Hotel Inspector, run by two first-time hoteliers]. I found it incredibly satisfying to get in there before the rot was too deep. The longer a business is going, and going badly, the harder it is to eradicate bad practice.
What has most disappointed you?
Hoteliers constantly ignore, and argue with, what I say. If I have to tell one more bloody hotelier how important it is that their establishment is clean I will probably die of apoplexy. I get so enraged. I think cleanliness is the basic bare minimum that one can expect when staying at a hotel.
Also, I meet business owners that tell me review sites are somehow not true. I do understand that there is a possibility for manipulation of reviews, but you can’t put the genie back in the bottle. Review sites exist, people look at them, so make sure you address the issues that people bring up on them.
Is one problem failure to understand the importance of being online?
Yes. And I sympathise, I’m a Luddite. I don’t Facebook or tweet. But businesses have to understand that those tools are useful. If I was running a business now, I’d have to face my fears about them.
Are there any unique challenges for a family business?
I think it is amazing how often you see children following in their parents’ footsteps. There are very few family businesses I’ve seen where there was a painless handover of power [from parent to child]. Usually the young Turk is desperate to make changes and the old geezer is desperately trying to stop them. I’m normally on the side of the old geezer: they’ve done the blood and guts work of building a business.
Do you have a mentor?
I don’t have a mentor as such, but I have my uncle and my mum [Polizzi’s uncle Rocco Forte and her mother Olga Polizzi are from a long line of hoteliers] so I’ve never needed to look outside the family for help, inspiration or advice. But while working on The Hotel Inspector I kept thinking about my first food and beverage manager, Wolfgang Krueger. I was a 22-year-old in Hong Kong, working with him at the Mandarin Oriental and he taught me about attention to detail and planning. He is a hundred million times more organised than me, but it’s his example that I keep in mind.
Is there anything you would have done differently?
Looking back, [I sometime wonder] why am I not the Nick Jones [founder of Soho House Group] of the hotel world? I was born with every advantage. I could have set up a chain. I think I probably wasn’t ambitious enough. I never wanted to go and raise funds; I never had a burning idea that I wanted to do myself. In some ways I’m sorry about it, and in other ways I’ve had a lovely life.
Tells us a bit about your new TV show, Alex Polizzi: Hire Our Heroes, in which you help army veterans find work
It’s well-known that in this country we’re suffering a severe skills shortage. Meanwhile, thousands of veterans have left the armed forces in the last four years and struggle to find work. I thought: “There must be a way to unpick this, it can’t be that hard.” So I went in search of veterans who were struggling to get back into employment.
I ended up working with four male veterans. I was very naive and thought I’d be able to make an enormous difference. I haven’t been able to do that, but the guys I worked with are in a much better state. [A large number of] veterans coming from the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq suffer from common mental illnesses, such as depression, anxiety and substance abuse, which have been caused or aggravated by their armed forces experience. Many suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. And it’s much more likely that anyone who suffers from PTSD will struggle to get into employment. I’m incredibly proud of the show.
What have been the highlights of your career?
I was really proud to open a restaurant for Marco Pierre White when I was 26. And I was incredibly proud to open Hotel Endsleigh for my mum in 2005. That was a real baptism of fire. I’d never had to be responsible for a whole hotel before. It taught me so much about myself and the things I’m good at and not good at.
Alex Polizzi: Hire Our Heroes concludes on Friday at 9pm on BBC Two.
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