Golden rule of enterprise proves a winner in US

WILD GEESE: John Golden, President and chief executive of Huthwaite

“YOU CAN get where you want to go quickly and get out of something that’s not a fit more quickly,” says John Golden of what he sees as the more direct way of doing business in the US.

The Dubliner has lived in the US for 13 years and is now president and chief executive of the Washington DC-based sales training company Huthwaite.

The business is owned by the FTSE-listed Informa, which runs training, exhibitions and events businesses and has annual sales of more than $1.3 billion.

Golden seems to have reached where he wants to go.

Leaving college in Dublin in the late 1980s, when unemployment was running at over 16 per cent, Golden secured a coveted public service job with the Eastern Health Board in an era when bagging such a permanent pensionable post was the holy grail.

At a time though when many graduates would have eschewed the existential angst of “not really knowing I want to do” in favour of the job for life, Golden jacked it in and headed to Spain to teach English.

After a year in Barcelona, he returned to an Ireland that was changing perceptibly. “It was the beginning of the tech boom,” he recalls. Ireland’s nascent e-learning sector was beginning to bud and companies like SkillSoft, Riverdeep and NETg not only dominated the technology news but were attracting arts graduates like flypaper.

Golden, a Trinity College history graduate, got a job at a fast-growing e-learning company called CBT Systems. The company had just 25 employees in Dublin at the time as well as the obligatory Silicon Valley office.

“I joined as a technical writer but they put a much higher premium on writing than on the technical side,” says Golden.

CBT went on to become of Ireland’s earliest dotcom darlings – it was one of the first Irish technology firms to undertake an IPO, garnering a Nasdaq flotation in 1995.

Golden soon got involved on the product development side and was put in front of customers visiting from the US. “CBT was smart and used Ireland as a showcase for their product,” he says. “I got involved in facilitating the US customer visits.”

Golden recalls an 11am summons to the general manager’s office in 1997 where he was asked how long it would take him to wrap up his affairs and head to Silicon Valley.

“I said I could probably be ready by 3pm,” jokes Golden. He left Ireland a couple of days later.

Golden was catapulted into the epicentre of the new economy. “Silicon Valley was amazing at that time – new dotcoms were springing up, the freeways were packed, it felt like the gold rush.”

At a time when dotcoms were doubling their valuations over night, he says, “everyone got into stocks, it was just crazy. If, in a month your stock hadn’t doubled, you were like, ‘what happened?’ ”

In the meantime, CBT changed its name to SmartForce in 1999. In 2002, it merged with SkillSoft but, by then, Golden had decided to move on. Making the decision to stay in his adopted home, he joined the executive team at training company New Horizons in southern California, from where his wife hails.

With the company’s traditional classroom business eroding, Golden was tasked with moving things online. Managing a $32 million business unit, he oversaw the development of training products for franchises in 50 countries

Continuing on the e-learning vein, he next moved across the country to a Pennsylvania-based start-up, Learning Services International.

The proposition was online professional development for schoolteachers but, describing teacher grading as a “hot potato” and with the primary education system tightly controlled by school districts, he says it was “a hard road”.

Golden’s next jump was in 2006 to the Mortgage Bankers Association, a national body representing America’s real estate finance industry.

Based in Washington DC, Golden led the association’s education arm delivering training to mortgage providers and loan officers. His timing, he admits, was extraordinary – “yes, it only took me a year to tank the subprime market,” he quips.

Of the majority of the association’s members, he says: “They loved the industry, they genuinely loved helping families to get into their own homes.”

With regard to the subprime offenders, “I think low interest rates, the free flow of capital and political encouragement to expand home ownership created a ‘gold rush’.

“There was a certain amount of political pressure to expand home ownership and lenders such as Fannie May and Freddie Mac were to allowed to buy and sell subprime mortgages – there was an implicit approval of subprime lending from all angles.”

Remaining in Washington DC, which he describes as “Hollywood for politicians”, Golden joined sales training company Huthwaite in 2008. He says the company’s trademarked “Spin” selling technique is more about asking the right questions and listening than fast-talking.

“In a contracted economy, it’s harder for companies to make a sale,” says Golden. “If you can’t afford to grow by acquisition, you’ve got to outsell your competitors to take market share. How you sell can be your differentiator . . . companies are investing in their sales force to sell their way out of the situation.”

Under Golden’s stewardship, the company, which also operates in Asia, Australia and Europe, has doubled its bottom line in the past year and parent Informa has also appointed him to the helm of its financial services training company, Omega Performance.

So, with more than a decade under his belt in the US, how would he describe the business culture there?

“People have a real sense of entrepreneurship here,” he says. “They are always enthused and excited about trying new things, there’s an impatience and a constant forward momentum.

“In Ireland, I think people don’t like to put their cards on the table but there’s a directness here that’s beneficial to business. It’s a culture that celebrates self-reliance and trying new things. You can still do the rags-to-riches thing here.”