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 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So many mistakes.
And I think one of the big ones was around going and doing acquisitions to try and grow the business faster.
And we didn't need to.
We got distracted and should have focused on the core.
So going and buying a furniture warranty business that we paid 40 million pounds for.
And I was horrified about a year ago because I read the memoir of my first chairman, great guy called Lindsay Berry.
He was chairman of South Staff's Water Group.
And he very flatteringly called me an entrepreneur of genius, which was definitely not true.
But he also wrote that HomeServe was doing so well that when I came up with a harebrained idea of going and buying Regency Warranty Group for £40 million, they knew it was the wrong thing to do and they didn't have the courage to tell me not to do it.
This was a memorandum he'd written.
This was in his memoir.
And it was the first time that I knew that the board didn't want to do the deal, but they didn't confront the brutal facts and say, Richard, stupid idea, two steps removed from what you're doing, and we're not going to do it.
I've had chairmen after that that told me exactly that.
Going into Brazil or India with HomeServe?
Stupid idea, too difficult, and the answer's no.
Right.
And I listened and took the advice and probably was a little bit pissed off for a day or two and then got back focused again and got over it.
So I was horrified when I read that.
Yeah, so the brutal truth point works both ways, doesn't it?
You want to hear it as well?
Showing 781–800 of 914 · page 40 of 46
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