Sir Richard Harpin
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And entrepreneurs can't just bury their head in the sand and say, well, costs are rising.
We're going to absorb them.
Really important that they look at how they take costs out of the business.
So AI is a great tool to be able to battle down some of those rising costs and reduce some headcount that isn't required.
And that's really, really important.
But equally, I think you've also got to rise above the noise and say, I've got to focus on my growth.
And despite all that noise, I'm going to follow the nine steps.
scale up my business.
And I am determined to turn it into a business that is worth 100 million dollars or a billion dollars.
I listed IPO-ed HomeServe on the UK stock market in 2004.
was a public company chief exec for 18 years.
And I noticed it became harder and harder to run a public company with more and more red tape, more and more committees, more and more governance.
And as a public company chief exec, you could be focusing on all of that governance and you get to Friday and think, oh, I haven't thought about how we're going to grow the business this week.
I haven't put enough time into going and listening to customer calls in the call center or a retailer going out and spending time talking to customers in their stores.
So you needed a real discipline to say, got to make sure you do comply with all of those committees and all of the red tape and make sure that you've freed up enough time to spend on growing the business.
Hire some people that can look after the government and stuff.
I think it did mean that...
When Brookfield came along, the big Canadian private equity house with over a trillion dollars under management and made us an offer of £4.1 billion to acquire HomeServe, and we were a top 100 listed company in the UK, we thought that's an offer that's too good to refuse.
And the next stage of our life as a company will be in a private environment where there are different pressures, but able to get on and run and grow the business without such a level of short-termism and focused on the near-term results.