In 2014 Richard decided to set up a company to make people happy.

Here’s why …

The early years

When I was 16 years old, a career adviser came to my school to help us decide our futures. In the end, he was absolutely no use in helping me decide what job to do or even what degree to study, but he did give me one piece of advice that would shape the rest of my life.

“Do something you love doing, something that makes you happy.”

I know everyone has heard this advice a million times, it’s on posters in every office in the world, but, for me, the words went deeper than that. And from that moment on, whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to do when I got older, I just said I wanted to be happy.

The problem was, at 16, I had no idea what job would make me happy, and I was no wiser at 18, or 4 years later when I finished university . So, at 22, while all my colleagues headed to the City in cheap Burton suits to begin careers in finance, I traveled the world in pursuit of happiness.

The wild years

First stop was Turkey where I ran a bar, then I sailed around the Caribbean, then I returned to Turkey to teach waterskiing before heading to Australia and South East Asia where I bleached my hair and wore a shark tooth necklace. I lived everyday to its fullest in this constant state of euphoria. I was happy, very happy.

But after 4 years away I felt I was missing something, a purpose, so I headed back to the UK, to reality.

The wilderness years

First, I became an assistant hotel manager, then a project logistics controller for a massive telecommunications firm (yes, it was boring) then I headed off to the Canary Islands where I taught English and IT before setting up many marginally successful businesses.

Life was OK, I got married, bought a house, and had two beautiful girls. But there was something missing. I’d forgotten what my career adviser had told me - I wasn’t doing something I loved. Then I read two books: “Start With Why” and “Let My People Go Surfing,” and everything changed.

My reawakening

“Start With Why” taught me that, to be successful, in my case, to be happy, I needed a purpose, an overarching “Why.” And “Let My People Go Surfing” showed me that it was possible to build a successful company whose main objective was just to do good.

So, in 2014, with my co-founder, Ted, we set up Secret Source, an IT company whose main goal was to make people happy. The problem was, we had no idea how to do this. We thought we did, but really didn’t. For many years, we floundered. We bought sofas and hammocks for the office. We organised crazy parties and events, thinking the secret to workplace happiness was to just give out perks. The more the better. To our disappointment, they had very little effect.

And then in 2017, I discovered Google’s Project Aristotle, and I learned about Psychological Safety, and suddenly everything made sense. For the next five years, I immersed myself in the science of well-being and the science of happiness, I trawled through the academic research on team performance, and how to build better teams and applied all my learnings to our fledgling company.

With our new knowledge, we grew and grew, and in 2022, I was able to step aside and hand over the daily running of the company and the role of CEO.

Teaching the world how to build better, happier teams

With Secret Source now under the care of Rachel I embarked on the next stage of my life, sharing my knowledge with the rest of world. My purpose … to show businesses that to build the best teams, to build the best companies, the most important thing you can do is to focus on their happiness.

So, if you want to know how to make your teams happier, if you want to know how to make them perform better and stay together longer please reach out. I’d love to chat.

Contact Richard for more info.