I’m a curious mix of businessman, coach, advisor and facilitator.

I love facilitating honest conversations that get people unstuck. I do this via Campfire Circles, with co-directors or business partners who are struggling to have the right conversations on their own, and in one-on-one coaching with impact-driven people who want challenging, championing and support to get clear about the important things and to grow.

By ‘trade’ I’ve been a businessman, but I’ve never quite felt at home in the world of conventional business and its decoupling from the wider world and all that it faces.

But neither do I self-identify as ‘hippy’, finding the knee-jerk writing off of all business and business people by some as ‘venal’ and ‘evil’ as too simple a view.

I love the energy and optimism of business, the sense of can-do and willingness to break rules compelling and exciting. And, harnessed by the right people with the right intentions, business can be a powerful thing.

THE WORLD I GREW UP IN

I grew up in a happy, deeply loving home – my mother is a therapist, my father an environmentalist-cum-entrepreneur. In many ways, I’m a blend of both of those influences: a mother who focuses very much on the well-being of people’s inner worlds, and my father who was, and still is, wracked with concern about the state of the world as a whole and has used business as a platform for his beliefs.

Our dinners were rich with conversation, sometimes unrelentingly so. Friends from school could be daunted by the prospect of joining us for dinner, terrified by the well-meaning but unfailingly energetic inquisition my Dad might give them about their views on the world. Our home was often full of interesting passers by, leading lights of the 1970s green movement mixed with more conventional types from my parent’s middle class heritage and therapist friends of my mum’s.

It was undoubtedly an upbringing of privilege. I was loved, supported, enabled, challenged, encouraged and given ample opportunity to shine. But I was endlessly tempted by mischief and rule-breaking, struggling to abide by rules I felt were senseless, and always wanting to have fun where it were possible. This was, after all, the role model I’d seen in my rule-bending, convention-challenging and entrepreneurial father. My school reports were predictable (“full of promise and potential, if only he would apply himself and stop messing around”) and it led to me ‘trying out’ several Bristol schools – including a spell being home-schooled – before realising that I wanted to go to a good university and this would happen not through divine intervention but hard work. I hauled myself up, worked hard, did well and ended up going to Edinburgh. It was a near miss but an important lesson.

MY PROFESSIONAL PAST

I ran the family business, Sawday’s, for 8 years until December 2017, having been in and out of it – via a Masters in Sustainable Development (with spells at the Guardian, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Welsh Local Government Association, ICI and Triodos Bank) and some time working in a sustainability and urban planning consultancy – since leaving university.

Leading Sawday’s was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. Aged 30, I took over the business mid-recession, during the collapse of publishing (we were a guide book publishing company originally) and with the rise of spectacularly-funded disruptors such as Airbnb, Tripadvisor and Booking.com. I had youthful zeal, a passionate belief in the company and what it stood for, and a clear sense of what needed to change in order for us not just to survive but to thrive.

Years later, after an immense amount of change (business model, team structures, technology, new start-up, products, Board changes, family involvement levels and the rest – oh, and having twins!), I decided it was time to step aside and pass the baton to someone with fresh energy, new perspective and the legs to run for another 8 years, as hard and as fast as the market now requires.

I’d managed to turn the tanker around, and to do so profitably. I’d been stretched beyond my comfort levels often, learned a thousand lessons, made a thousand mistakes, learned huge amounts about myself and been exposed to a range and breadth of circumstances that might typically take people many more years to experience.

More than anything, I’m proud that a very special business, with a precious and important culture and ethos, lives on today with the potential to make a real difference in the world, and to be an example to the wider business world that a values-centred, ethical, purpose-driven organisation can also be commercially successful.

NOW

At the end of 2017 as the business transitioned to majority employee ownership, I took the family away to Africa for 7 months of adventure before school began. We closed our computers, said farewell to our work selves and took time away from it all to reconnect to what is most important.

Having returned, I now split my time between running Campfire, a NED role for Sawday’s, private coaching for entrepreneurs and business owners I respect and believe in, and helping to grow More Happi – a venture-backed coaching platform aiming to democratise access to coaching.

I live in Devon on a co-housing project I created with old uni friends, with my wife – a charity CEO – and two nine-year olds.