Rob Levick – Business Owner
Rob Levick is ‘The Profit Detective’, founder and owner of a Newhaven based Business Growth Strategy Consultancy.
Rob’s early career was spent in the numbers business, working in the accountancy profession in the 70?s and 80?s where he gained an enormous knowledge of family and owner managed businesses. Working around the West Midlands and the Black Country he was able to study closely the successes and failures of SME’s in a variety of industries.
Following an ill considered move into the world of Life Assurance and Pension selling Rob moved to a rapidly growing company in Stratford Upon Avon where he was a member of the team that grew the business from £5m to a sale for £23m in 5 years.
In the process Rob established himself as an expert in a particularly profitable niche of the business, which was to result in him setting up his own consultancy in the mid 90?s.
But it wasn’t all plain sailing; a downturn in the industry during the second half of the 90?s saw Rob walking the streets one afternoon with 12 pence in his pocket wondering just how the mortgage would be paid the following week.
This became a defining moment as he saw the need to add Business Strategy and Marketing skills to his ability with numbers.
The change was dramatic. Within 18 months Rob had repositioned himself as the ‘Go-To Guy’, the ‘Visible Expert’ in his niche. Over the next few years he spoke at and chaired conferences in the UK and was flown regularly to the US where he was the first European to speak on his subject at the industry leading conference in Las Vegas. The consulting side of his business grew rapidly and Rob began to receive five figure cheques to reserve his time.
Then in 2004 an attempt to float a business on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) became Rob’s most expensive ‘learning opportunity’ to date. Months of touring London talking to Brokers, Lawyers, Investors, PR firms and Accountants failed to get the business off the ground and left Rob with a six figure cost for his ‘education’.
Arriving in Scotland in 2006 Rob decided it was time to take his 30 plus years of business experience and his insatiable desire to learn more and channel it into helping Scottish businesses grow. And so The Profit Detective was born.
And that’s where Rob is today.
As to the future, in addition to continuing to help businesses find their hidden profits and additional income streams Rob is also authoring two books on Small Business Strategy and Tactics, and in 2012 he plans to publish an updated version of ‘Self Help’ a book from the 19th century written by Haddington born and former Edinburgh resident, Samuel Smiles. 2012 will celebrate the 200th anniversary of Smiles’ birth.
And when you meet Rob you may care to ask him about his association with one of the world’s top bands of the last 30 years, his afternoon spent with the £400 million man (who later lost it all in a classic business blunder) and the day Rob sat on the shores of Lake Geneva and nearly went into business with the UK’s largest ever convicted Tax fraudster!