Where are you originally from, and where do you currently reside?
I was born in the UK, although I have made over 300 transatlantic trips to the US alone, plus trips to APAC and Europe and so I feel like I have lived half my life in the US, but I am now back living full time in the UK.
What do you enjoy doing in your free time? Any favourite sports or hobbies?
Unfortunately, I broke my back playing rugby when I was younger and so I am very limited in what I can participate in sport-wise, just gentle stuff like walking and swimming (of sorts). My previous passion was martial arts, along with rugby, football and cricket. However, my biggest passion outside work has always been music. I have played all over the world and even have a few tunes on Spotify under my own name and Silver Roach, my old band… Currently I am playing in a great little covers band called After Eve, where I am lead guitarist. We play anything from Blink 182 to Abba in small clubs and pubs mainly, but we have also played some decent-sized festivals with over 7,000 people. I love performing live and I also have a fully functioning recording studio at home.
How did you get into the AV industry, and what was your journey to your current role?
I started as a shop boy working in an independent TV & Video store here in the UK. I then moved on to run my own car audio integration store, which ended up working for all sorts of famous people; we even supplied OEM products to McLaren, Aston Martin and Bentley as well. When Dolby Digital 5.1 came out, we moved into home cinema and then I set up a distribution business called BBG, which moved into pro AV. I then sold that business to Peerless in 2008 and became one of the owners of Peerless-AV. After stepping back from that, I started my current business www.re-sauce.net. I am CEO at Re-Sauce and we help brands with their GTM, sales strategy, sales introductions, lead generation, marketing, press & PR.
What are your thoughts on the future of the industry? How is your company addressing potential challenges?
We are seeing a huge change in the way ChatGPT and other LLMs affect SEO. In the good old days, a few key words and some paid SEO could get you where you wanted to be and to show up where you needed to on the relevant searches. However “real brand authority” is critical now in terms of how that works. It’s more GEO/AEO and so we are making sure our clients have strong case studies, thought leadership, awards entries, etc, all of which will ensure better visibility on the searches and so not like it used to be. This is critical to any business and so we try and ensure all our clients are on the front of this.
Any exciting news you’d like to share – upcoming projects, tech developments, or plans for 2026 and beyond?
2026 year has been a massive year for Re-Sauce with Beky Cann and Beth Warren joining our senior leadership team, both truly amazing women and so we have had a great time all getting to know each other. Beky and I previously worked together for 11 years at Peerless-AV, when Beky was director of Global PR for them and Beth is based in the US and was previously the CMO at Creative Realities. Right now, we are focused on making sure all our clients have speaking opportunities and are concentrating on ISE 2027. Even though it’s a few months away, we are already well under way with that. Tech-wise, we tend to live our lives through our clients and their tech, but I like to feel we can really help them on their journey and we provide lots of ideas and advice to help them with that.
What excites you most about working in AV every day?
I just love AV, the people, the products, the challenges. No one day is ever the same for me and that’s what I really enjoy about Re-Sauce and AV. However, it’s the people that are enduring… Wherever I go in the world, I will know people and I always spend a lot of time making sure that I am up to speed with the regional shows/events and verticals that AV works in. I also love spending time with my long-term friends in AV from all over the world. Last year I travelled all over the globe, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, Middle East, US and Europe and all so I could ensure the advice and sales contacts Re-Sauce provides are all up to date.
If you had to predict one major shift in the AV industry over the next decade, what would it be?
The obvious one is AI. AI is already affecting our lives in every aspect, both good and bad. In a good way the advances in efficiencies for businesses using AI is super exciting. And in a bad way.. it would be a terrible shame if the wonderful creatives in our industry were put out of business by AI. I think people still need to be creative, and I do worry that we might become a little too dependent on AI and not learn to think for ourselves and stop being creative.
What’s the most valuable leadership lesson you’ve learned during your career in AV?
There are so many. The key is to learn from them. Cashflow is critical to every business I have run, especially in distribution and so understanding how you are going to finance your business and projects is critical. Make sure you spread your risk, don’t be too dependent on one customer or vertical. Make sure you always have a plan A and plan B. Make sure you have a strong disaster recovery plan for broken tech or any other issues that might come your way. However, my biggest learning was to surround myself with people who can do the roles you don’t enjoy or don’t want to do, someone who can perform them even better than yourself. I hated finance, but I understood the critical cash needs of the business. I was capable of running operations, but I didn’t enjoy it. I love sales and opening doors and today, 45 years on, I am still opening doors every day for our clients and accelerating their businesses. I also love marketing, that’s what I do best and so I leave my team to do their thing. If you have the right people in place, then don’t try to micro-manage them, let them do their thing and if you don’t have the right people in place, then look to change them asap.
What advice would you give to someone looking to build a successful career in pro AV?
It really depends on what you want out of life. If you want to build your own business, then ideally spend time in each area of a business and get to truly understand how a business works. Find out what you enjoy and what your strengths are and then build a team around you that can support you. If you enjoy what you do for work, then it almost doesn’t feel like a job. That said, it is important to keep a clear distinction between having a life outside AV with your family and hobbies, versus working seven days a week. One last thing. Always treat everyone with respect and don’t burn your bridges, as you never know where people will turn up next. This is both a large industry in many ways, and also a small one. I have always tried to treat everyone in the way I would like to be treated myself. If you don’t, things can have a weird way of coming back on you later. Be nice to everyone, and you are way less likely to have issues later on in life.
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