Richard has repeatedly succeeded as the leader of fast-growing businesses and has completed multiple disposals with Enterprise Values ranging from £10m to £100m. Until November, 2016, he was the CEO of The Grass Roots Group where he built a team that doubled the value of the business in three years, and led its sale to Blackhawk Network for £95m.
Richard’s career has already spanned thirty years and he has been at the helm of two of the most successful companies in the world in their respective fields of Data-driven Marketing (Claritas Europe); and Employee and Customer Engagement (The Grass Roots Group).
Richard has served on the boards of more than twenty market-leading businesses in various positions including CEO, Chairman, and Non-Executive Director in the UK, mainland Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He lived in China between 2009 and 2013 where he established a successful employee and customer engagement business. As a result he gained vital experience and built an outstanding network in China and the wider Asia-Pacific region. His international experience dates as far back as the early 1980’s when he studied Russian and International Relations for a year at Surrey University and the Moscow State Pedagogical Institute when Russia was still part of the former Soviet Union. Through his company, Helping People Succeed, founded in 2016, he currently works with a portfolio of client companies, Private Equity Houses, and Corporate Advisory firms in a range of sectors.
Teaching approach
Richard is passionate about communication and the importance of engaging people in order to achieve results. He uses his practical experience as well as the established theories of people engagement to help leaders find effective and lasting solutions to business challenges and to reach their full potential.
He has applied this in practice in organisations all over the world having lived and worked in China, France, The Netherlands, Germany, the UK, and Israel; and successfully led companies including start-ups, early-stage, and mature businesses in more than a dozen other countries across four continents. He is recognised for his ability to create rapid growth, both organically and through M&A.
This wide experience has shaped his belief in the importance of building effective relationships based on cultural understanding and respect for diversity, as well as the value of speaking foreign languages – Richard speaks fluent French, and still manages passable German and Russian.
Richard is an expert mentor, coach, and facilitator. He has developed unique leadership and team building methodologies based on understanding the individual aspirations, values and beliefs of people, and harnessing their individual and collective talents to achieve extraordinary results. He is also a qualified Football Association coach.
He has extensive experience of speaking at conferences and facilitating leadership development programmes. His natural, authentic style is adaptable to a wide range of audiences. He is both entertaining and challenging, and his material can be tailored to senior executives; marketing, sales and HR professionals at all levels; entrepreneurs; and groups of managers in any disciplines.
Richard adds value strategically; commercially; operationally; and/or in pre-deal appraisal through to completion. Whilst now ostensibly non-executive and engaged to support others to succeed, he is still known to roll-up his sleeves if required to take on more executive functions in the interests of maximising Enterprise Value. In particular, he supports the senior leadership of companies to create high-performing teams from the C-Suite right through an organisation in order to achieve profitable growth, improve productivity, and crystallise enterprise value.