About Ralph

Growth, from the sales floor up

I started out as a salesperson, became a sales director, and went on to senior roles at Orange Business Services, Tata Communications, CenturyLink, Virgin Media Business and Spirit AI, leading teams that stretched from San Francisco to Sydney.

Most recently I was Chief Growth Officer at Connexin, where the group grew revenue eight-fold, from £3 million to £25 million, in under three years. Connexin placed second in GP Bullhound's 2024 Northern Tech Awards Top 100, up from 16th the year before and 30th before that. Along the way I completed an MBA at Henley Business School, part-time over three years while working full time.

How the mind works

My interest in the mind started early. At 17 I took part, as a subject, in research into memory and recall, and I've been curious about it ever since.

I'm a certified Trainer of Master NLP, Master NLP Coaching, Master Time Line Therapy® and Master Hypnosis, accredited by the ABNLP, ABH and TLTA, and listed with the General Hypnotherapy Standards Council and Register. I use that training in the work I do with leaders and teams, and in the way I build and run businesses.

A singer first

Before any of this I trained as a singer at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and performed classical and jazz around the world. It turned out to be good preparation for a stage of any kind, and I still make music, some of which you'll find on the Music page.

Writing

I've written five books on performance, leadership and the human side of work, the most recent being The Warmth in the Room, about why human presence is worth more as AI makes cognition cheap. The others are Accelerate Personal Performance, 60 Ways to Hurray!, Accelerate Leadership Performance and Accelerate Consulting Performance. I'm an Executive Contributor at Brainz Magazine and host The Accelerate Performance Podcast.

Now

Most of my time goes into PiViva, a coaching platform where an AI companion takes the eleven o'clock at night moments and human coaches take the things a machine shouldn't. I built it largely on my own, with AI doing much of the work a team once would have, and that experience is behind my keynote Headcount of One. The rest goes into Accelerate Performance (AP) Ltd, where I work with growing businesses on go-to-market, sales and leadership, and into speaking and hosting events. I live in Wimbledon, in southwest London.