The moments that made millions

Spencer Manuel, Founder & CEO, NetworkersMSB

Already the boss of a modestly successful recruitment consultancy, Manuel found himself in Mexico in 2000, about to open his first overseas office. However, a visit to a local fiesta nearly finished his business aspirations at a stroke. “I was sitting in the back of a taxi, ready to leave, when two guys with sombreros and moustaches stuck their heads in the window,” says Manuel. “I thought they were in bandit fancy dress for a minute, but then they drew their guns and I realised it was no joke.

“I gave them everything – my money, my watch – but they shot two rounds into the back of the car. I didn’t feel anything at first, but then I reached down to my leg and felt thick ‘tomato sauce’ in my hand, at which point I felt pain like you could never imagine.”

Blasted through the upper leg, and with his dorsal vein severed, Manuel lost eight of his body’s 11 pints of blood in the 30-minute mercy dash to the nearest hospital and found himself slipping out of consciousness. Thankfully, he’d forgotten to give over an Amex card to the gunmen and, when the American doctors found it and swiped it, he had enough credit on his account for them to save his life. “They told me quite clearly afterwards that if I hadn’t had that card, they wouldn’t have done a thing for me,” he recalls.

It was the coming months of recovery that served as his business turning point. “All the time I was lying in bed, I kept thinking that I wasn’t going to let it beat me,” says Manuel. “It gave me an inner strength, I was going to overcome this and make a success of myself.”

Manuel returned to work and forged ahead in earnest with his renewed business ambitions. He mounted an aggressive takeover of MSB, a rival recruitment company three times the size of Networkers International, and built the resulting business into an AIM-listed, multi-award-winning, global recruitment consultancy with 17 offices in 15 countries. He now employs more than 330 people, 2008 saw his ninth consecutive year of business and profit growth, and his personal wealth amounts to “around $10m”.