Richard Harpin

speaker

914 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jan 2026 last heard 12 Jan

Richard Harpin’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.

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James Reed: all about business · 61. The email that saved HomeServe and sparked a £4bn business | Sir Richard Harpin · 12 Jan 2026 podcast

What does it really take to build and scale a business worth a billion pounds?

Today on All About Business, I'm joined by Richard Harpin, one of the UK's most successful business leaders and the founder of HomeServe, which he grew into a FTSE 100 company before selling it for £4.1 billion in 2022.

We'll be exploring what it means to grow a company that lasts, from finding the right growth mindset to backing the next generation of entrepreneurs.

And we'll be discussing his book, How to Make a Billion in Nine Steps.

Today on All About Business, I'm really delighted to welcome Richard Harpin to the studio.

Richard is the founder of HomeServe, a home emergency repairs and improvement company.

HomeServe was founded in 1993 as a joint venture with South Staffordshire Water, and the company offered subscription-based home emergency repairs.

Under Richard's leadership, HomeServe grew into a multinational business operating in the UK, Canada, France, the US and several other countries.

It was listed on the London Stock Exchange and later became part of the FTSE 100.

And in 2022, Richard agreed to sell HomeServe to Brookfield Asset Management for £4.1 billion.

So this is an amazing business journey.

I'm looking forward to sort of asking about Richard.

You eventually stepped down as chairman of HomeServe just earlier this year in January.

Since then, you've found time to publish a best-selling book and take on several other jobs, which I'll also ask you about, Richard.

Firstly, welcome.

I mean, this HomeServe journey, I mean, you are amongst a few British people who've actually started and built billion-pound businesses.

And I want to ask you, how did that begin?

And what were the sort of key moments in your view that made that happen?

Yeah, I'd always wanted to be an entrepreneur and trying to find the big idea that could work.

And I'd been working at Procter & Gamble in marketing, buying houses in Newcastle.

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