The executive-turned-coach who thrives on seeing success

Simon Holt was the managing director of Skipton Building Society’s former adviser arm, Skipton Financial Services, in the mid-nineties when he found a group of other executives who became a sounding board for his concerns.

“I knew I needed to change the revenue model - the way that financial advisers got paid by the client. It was a transformational time in the financial services sector. But it meant that cashflow-wise we were going to take a massive hit on the bottom line,” he says.

“I needed the society’s backing to change the business model well ahead of the market and the competition.”

Holt joined the Yorkshire branch of executive coaching organisation Vistage.

“I rehearsed my board presentation to the Vistage team,” he says. “I needed to get main board support because it was such a critical, transformational point within that organisation so preparation was key.”

That was 22 years ago and Holt has remained a loyal member of Vistage ever since. Not only that, he’s just become chair of his group of 13 business executives.

“I get great pleasure from seeing what other people do, it gives me a real boost. If I can think that I’ve played some little part in that journey, that’s brilliant,” he says.

At the age of 59, Holt, a quietly-spoken Lancastrian, is embarking on the next phase of his career.

His part-time role with Vistage sees him chairing group meetings once a month and spending two hours a month in one-to-one sessions with each of his members.

Vistage, billed as the world’s largest executive coaching organisation for small and medium-sized businesses, also hosts two conference events in the region every year.

There’s no getting away from the fact that, although it attracts some women, the organisation has more male than female members and there is also a general diversity issue to tackle.

“It’s reflective of industry in general so there is typically a male bias,” says Holt. “That’s changing but not dramatically because the workplace isn’t changing very fast. It’s not just women, though. I think there’s probably more of a general diversity question mark there.”

Holt is also keen to turn the vast business knowledge he has amassed over the years into workshops.

“I tend to concentrate more on the things I get wrong than I get right and always have done,” he says. “I want to take that and help other people to not make the same mistakes.”

Skipton-based Holt, who is married and a father to two grown-up children, describes himself as a little bit too trusting and affiliative but overall a good judge of character.

“Relationships are very important to me. It doesn’t always work because some people might take advantage of you but overall I think I’m a pretty good judge of character,” he says.

He adds: “I’m emotionally intelligent. I think I ‘get’ people and their drives and motivations and that’s probably why I enjoy what I’m doing.”

Holt, who was born in Rochdale and grew up in Lytham, near Blackpool, didn’t know what career to pursue as a teenager. He started a business studies degree at Preston Polytechnic but left within a year.

Instead, his father secured him a job working as a branch trainee at an insurance company in Preston. He worked his way up to selling insurance to insurance brokers before jumping ship to Skipton Building Society.

“I could see that banks and building societies were going to play a much bigger part in selling financial services to customers,” he says.

He was the third member of the team to join Skipton’s new financial services operation. “We were a tiny organisation in the corner of their office and nobody really knew what we did. We were in a traditional building society selling insurance and investments,” he says.

He adds: “I could see the opportunity and I was ambitious so I joined and ended up becoming the managing director.”

Under Holt’s leadership, the organisation grew to become one of the biggest independent financial advisers in the country.

He says: “When I look back at what I’m proud of, it’s taking that business from what could have been a sleepy department of the building society into a separate subsidiary, one of the biggest IFAs in the country and 300-plus staff and thousands of customers. We were virtually independent.”

He adds: “How did I do it? I had some good people around me.”

Once the revenue changes were approved by the board, it set in stone the next five years for the business and, in his mid-forties, Holt looked around for his next challenge.

He became a hands-on consultant. One of his most interesting jobs was advising an Islamic scholar on how to develop a range of Shariah compliant insurance products in the US. “That was really interesting and different,” he says.

He went on to work with accountancy firm Garbutt & Elliot as a consultant and became the managing director of its wealth management division in York before joining healthcare supplies firm Deliver Net as joint managing director.

“All of a sudden I was dealing with products that were actually on shelves. It was totally different from anything I’d done before,” he says. “But it was a successful business and good to be part of it.”

During that time, he had one eye on becoming a Vistage chair when the time was right. Two years ago, with the support of his group, he started putting in place plans for succession. A few weeks in and it’s going well so far. “I love it”, he says. “I’m so proud of what Vistage does.”

Growing a business is a key issue for many Vistage members so what would be his one piece of advice to help them scale? “You’ve got to have the right people around you because they’re actually the ones who will make sure you deliver,” he says.