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 · last 12 months

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

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And literally saw that money go down the drain in the space of six months.

The issue is people only have a plumbing emergency every five years, so there's no repeat business.

Cost of Yellow Pages was high, so the model didn't work.

So Yellow Pages for younger listeners was like a great big thick book in which business listed itself.

And that was where people turned to look for services of this sort.

It's been on the web in the old days.

Yeah, now going online and to businesses like Checkertrade that I'm involved in.

So A1, fast fix, you burnt your money.

So how did you sort of pivot?

I mean, that appears to be what happened next because HomeServe obviously was a slightly different proposition.

Yeah, it was to try and find a winning business model determined to stick with the business.

and managed to secure half a million pounds of investment from a little water company north of Birmingham called South Staffs.

But they wanted 52% of the business.

We'd run out of cash, so that was the only option.

And then thought, great, I'll grow the business and grow it to profitability, get economies of scale.

And guess what?

Every month the business grew.

And because we got the wrong business model, the breakeven line got further and further away.

So I ended up losing £50,000 a month and running out of money again, down to the last £10,000.

And we're taught at school that copying homework is bad.

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