People
Lucy Ryan
Lucy is the founding director of mindspring. Utilising her previous career as Sales Director in London and Sydney, she specialises in transforming sales, customer service and leadership skills at all levels and she has trained approximately 13,000 people across Europe in the last decade. Mindspring's training and coaching programmes have won numerous awards and their transformational programme for graduates was documented in her co-authored book, 'Selling for Virgins!'. Lucy is also one of the UK's foremost personal impact coaches for senior business leaders and to this end, she is a certified as an NLP Master Practitioner; a TA practitioner and licensed to administrate both the MSCEIT (the Emotional Intelligence Ability Test) and the Strengths Deployment Inventory.
Lucy is one of only a handful of people in Europe with an MSc in Applied Positive Psychology and she specialises in applying it to the business world, specifically strengths and organisational resilience. She is Honorary Lecturer at the University of East London in the Application of Positive Psychology to Coaching and Organisations and keynote speaker across Europe. Recognised for her vitality, creativity and warmth, Lucy is passionate about developing people so that their confidence and natural talents grow and flourish.
p.s.
Favourite food: Hot buttered toast and marmite
Favourite place: Any Greek island in the summer!
Childhood ambition: Ice-skater
Steve Clark
Steve is a founding partner of mindspring and an expert in understanding customers, people management and team leadership. During his first 12 year career as a seismologist, Steve led teams of up to 200 people in Nigeria, Libya, Thailand and India before returning to the UK. Over the last 14 years, Steve has worked at a high level in British industry leading and facilitating workshops for companies including Barclays Bank; Principality Building Society, Siemens, UNICEF and the RAC. For four years, Steve was passionately involved with the charity, Fulcrum Challenge, running leadership and development programmes for young, disadvantaged people with high potential.
Adding to his passion for sport, Steve trained as a fitness consultant and nutrition advisor five years ago. Since then, he has worked across Europe coaching senior leadership executives in companies such as Sony, to improve performance, fitness and energy levels. His inspiring, yet reassuring, approach consistently turns clients into fans!
His keen, creative mind has enabled mindspring to remain at the cutting edge of leadership and sales development. He designs our simulations, games boxes, training resources and programmes and ensures that every delegate is able to learn in a variety of different ways.
p.s.
Favourite food: Bangers and Mash
Favourite place: Salcombe in South Devon
Childhood ambition: to play for Leeds Utd
Vee Slack
Vee’s overriding passion and belief is that the foundation of all success is inspired motivational leadership, inspired motivated staff, open channels of communication and measurement. This underpins twenty years experience at the “sharp end”. For 14 years Vee held management positions with Interleasing UK, including Head of Strategic Sales and Head of Customer Service. During her tenure, costs were reduced by 30%, efficiency improved by 20% and staff retention increased by 10%. In addition the company won the service provision awards in 2002 and 2003.
Vee specialises in coaching and developing sales and service managers and their teams, helping them to introduce frameworks and metrics for corporate and personal success.
p.s.
Favourite food: Marmite
Favourite place: By the Aga
Childhood ambition: to be a vet
David Solomon
David graduated in Mathematical Statistics and Operational Research and spent a year in the City before going to RADA and training as an actor. After 5 years as a professional actor he worked as a video, CD-ROM and elearning designer and producer, for clients including the NHS Executive, the then Department of Environment, the Patent Office, Goldman Sachs, and BP.
As a facilitator and coach he brings his experience as an actor and salesman to empowering people to communicate more effectively. His work as a facilitator includes courses on Team Building, Sales, Negotiation, Coaching, Presentation, Feedback and Customer Experience. Clients include Santander, Lloyds Banking Group, Studio Canal, Odeon Cinemas, and Oxford Health NHS Trust.
p.s.
Favourite food: Sushi, South Indian, Thai, Chinese, Greek ... as long as its food
Favourite place: Beach, cold drink and Sunday times
Childhood ambition: to be a vet
Alun Maxwell
Alun Maxwell has been a professional roleplayer since 2002, specialising in sales and sales management scenarios - having worked in sales for sixteen years prior to Drama School. He has delivered sales roleplay in sectors that include Automotive Showroom Sales, Auto Leasing, Pharmaceuticals, Orthopeaedics, Cardiology, Radiology, Animal Feed, Aircon, Autocad, Market Research and many others.
He has also appeared in training videos on auto sales, identity theft, money laundering (protection from!), and oil exploration. Furthermore he has appeared in multiple roles as various stakeholders within complex business simulations.
p.s.
Favourite food: Hellman's Real Mayonnaise
Favourite place: Lake Bled in Slovenia
Childhood ambition: to have my own 'band room' full of drums, guitars, keyboards etc (still working on that one!)
Floyd K Ballantyne
A social sciences degree from Bradford University was fun at the time, but demand for sociologists and philosophers was thin on the ground, so after a ridiculous attempt to become an accountant with the civil service, Floyd finally found his métier in sales.
PGL Travel, the school/youth adventure specialist was his home for many years and after various sales and marketing roles he became Managing Director for 5 years. It was here that he had his 15 minutes of fame, starring in the BBC business reality show Back To The Floor. The programme was an excuse to watch heads of organisations work back on the shop floor and make a prat of themselves and in this Floyd didn’t disappoint – being told off on the BBC by a junior staff member for repeatedly swearing in front of the children.
In between 2 spells at PGL, Floyd also worked in senior sales roles at Horizon and Thomson Holidays, where he gained an appreciation of rather more structured sales processes and the absolute need for excellent MI and control systems. Account Management and Customer Care were also major features of his time with Thomson and are areas Floyd feels passionate about.
Floyd has worked in consultancy for over 10 years and enjoys making training courses interactive and lively, whilst also recognizing that ‘effective’ is the paramount quality in the client’s mind.
On the personal side, tackling short triathlons, adventures races and the odd marathon are signs that his mid-life crisis is in full swing, though he does like to relax with a good book, too.
p.s.
Favourite food: Avocado – food of the gods!
Favourite place: New Zealand – land of contrasts
Childhood ambition: Apart from scoring the winning goal at the cup final etc, I wanted to be a journalist, but can't remember why...
Ross Harvey
Ross Harvey has had a professional acting career of over twenty five years. His work includes theatre, television and radio. He has corporate experience in the oil and motor industry having worked for Amoco, Rover and Jaguar. Extensively experienced in corporate roleplay and forum theatre, worked on assignments throughout the UK, the US, South America and Asia. Areas of experience include sales training, assessment, leadership development from board room to shop floor.
p.s.
Favourite food: Thai
Favourite place: North Cornish coast, wild & rugged like me!
Childhood ambition: Commercial Pilot – always wanted to turn left when boarding