Gary Richards, founder of datingdirect.com, created Britain’s largest dating service. Richards always dreamed of having his own business so he admittedly didn’t pay much attention in school. When he left school at 16,however, his first job was as a waiter in a hotel restaurant for several years. He went through several other jobs, all the time having ideas for a business of his own. When he was 33 and single, he suddenly had the idea that the Internet could be a great way to meet other single people. When he looked online, you could only find dating companies based in America and even those seem to be sleazy or silly.  He knew there was an opportunity there for anyone who was ready and willing to take on the challenge.

Richards thought to himself, ” I can’t be the only one who wants to date.” He drew up a plan of what he thought a British online dating service might be like and researched the market for the next three months. He went out to the street and conducted polls asking people if a dating service in Britain would be a good idea. People encouraged him, and he put up a simple site where people could post details about themselves. The site received enough hits to encourage Richards to attempt a dating website where members could contact each other directly.

Richards gave the designer of the site a 20% stake in the company, and the site was launched in 1999 at the cost of $4000. Within three months it had 40,000 members. Now Richards had a new problem, so he called NZ Business Coach. In order to start making money, he had to turn the site into a membership site where people would pay to be members. In order to do this, he knew that he had to be able to accept credit cards. But Barclaycard, a credit card company in Britain, turned him down three times saying that a dating service was a high risk area, like gambling or pornography. Richards refused to take no for an answer and drove to see the man in charge of applications in person to give him a demonstration of the website.

The man was so impressed that he granted credit card facilities on the spot. This changed everything. Richards started charging $24 a month for members. By 2004 dating direct.com and 1.5 million active members and more than $16 million generated annually, with a profit of several million pounds per year. The site also had dozens of marriages and babies to its credit.

By 2007 the business had 5 million active members and Richard sold it to a French company, Meetec, for $48 million.

That same year, Richards went on to start another Internet-based company, for renting or selling overseas property, which had 150,000 properties registered by the end of that year.

Richards has also gone on to buy three bars in Tenerife.

His personal philosophy is,” You only get one crack at a big opportunity so make sure you recognize it and grab it with both hands. The moral of the story is, if you think you have a good idea to just keep going for it. You may lose some money and waste some time along the way, but at the end of the day you have only got find one idea that works.”