Portfolio Growth Officer

Why this role exists

Improving one company
isn't the opportunity.

Most companies hit a ceiling where tinkering at the edges stops working. This portfolio has several of them at once, each with its own team, its own brand, and its own way of making money. The job is to look across all of it, find where growth is actually held back, and make sure the right people and the right decisions are in place to get it moving again.

What you'd own

Portfolio Intelligence. Learn how every company actually works: how it makes money, who buys from it, and where the growth comes from.

Commercial Performance. Look at how each business is growing and find the real reason behind the numbers, good or bad.

Growth Capability. Judge whether the marketing, sales and commercial teams are strong enough, and say plainly where better leadership or talent is needed.

Talent. Help find, hire and develop strong growth people across the portfolio.

Strategic Projects. Get involved in the bigger bets: AI, acquisitions, automation, analytics, new ventures.

Cross-Portfolio Learning. When something works in one company, make sure the others can use it too.

Founder Advisory. Be the independent voice for John: clear recommendations, honest pushback, no spin.

You'll question things people have stopped questioning, point out where a team is missing a skill it needs, and push for decisions backed by something more than instinct.

The operator

Thirty years building,
scaling and buying businesses.

JohnDavy.co.uk MarisaPeer.com RTT.com

You'd work directly with John Davy as his independent adviser. He has spent more than thirty years building, buying and advising companies across a lot of different sectors. This is the portfolio you'd be helping grow.

13 connected businesses running today, across therapeutic education, professional accreditation, AI-driven personal development, breathwork and wellness.

42 retail and hospitality businesses built and sold, including a UK comedy club chain that was turning over $50M a year when it was sold.

Customers, certified practitioners and partners in more than 100 countries, on every continent.

All of it built without debt, out of cash flow and reinvestment rather than loans or outside equity. That is changing now.

Today it is in a venture-backed buying phase: acquiring companies that strengthen what is already there and speed things up.

What he is building now is a group of companies that share what works, instead of each one figuring it out alone. This role is here to make that happen faster.

Be clear before you apply

What this role is not.

If you are after any of these, this is not your role. Better to know that now.

Not a marketing leadership role

It is not a marketing leadership job. You are not here to own a function or run the marketing department of any one company.

Not day-to-day campaigns

You will not be running campaigns or managing execution. Each company's team owns delivery. Your job sits above that: the thinking, not the doing.

Not above the executive teams

You will not sit above the executive teams. You advise and influence, you do not give orders. The leaders still own their businesses.

Not a reporting role

This is not about building dashboards for the sake of it. It is about decisions. The numbers only matter here because they lead to better calls.

You can challenge people without putting their backs up, and you know when to influence rather than direct.

The person

You've done it,
not just advised on it.

You have grown real businesses and moved real numbers. You are as happy pulling apart a commercial assumption as you are working out whether the right person is running the team.

—You've grown businesses and improved performance, and you can say exactly where, by how much, and why.
—You think strategically, but you've also done the actual work. People can tell the difference.
—You can look at marketing, sales and the wider numbers and find the real cause, not just the symptom.
—You can judge whether a leader is up to it, and say so when they're not, even when it's awkward.
—You influence without authority. You change minds with evidence and trust, not your job title.
—You can hold several businesses in your head at once without losing the thread on any of them.

What success looks like

1.Every company has a clear view of its own numbers, and metrics that actually mean something.
2.Growth chances and risks get spotted early, not after the fact.
3.Where a team is missing a skill, it's known, and there's a plan to fix it.
4.Strong people have been brought in where they were missing.
5.What works in one company gets used by the others.
6.Leadership conversations are about evidence and outcomes, not opinion.
7.John has someone he trusts to see the whole picture, while each leader stays on the hook for running their own company.

Why this is different

Shape a portfolio, not a company.

Flexible OTE for the right person. But that is not the reason to want this.

You get to shape several businesses at once, working straight with the person building them, not just one company.

You are independent. The whole point of you is the outside view, so you can say the things insiders can't.

You see how growth really works across very different kinds of business. That is knowledge that keeps paying off.

For the right person, it is a rare shot at shaping how a whole portfolio performs over years, not quarters.

The application

Show us how you think.

This job comes down to judgement, diagnosis and influence. So be specific: real numbers, the actual situation, what actually happened. We care how you reason through a commercial problem, not how polished your pitch is.

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Question 01What specifically attracted you to this opportunity, and why do you believe your experience is relevant to advising multiple businesses rather than leading a single one?We want the real reason, and some sign you get the difference between advising and running.

Question 02Describe the most commercially significant growth challenge you've solved.Please include:·Business size / industry·The commercial problem·How you diagnosed it·What actions you recommended·Measurable outcome

Question 03Tell us about a time you discovered that leadership believed one thing was causing poor growth, but your analysis showed something completely different. How did you reach your conclusion, and what happened next?We're interested in how you separate the assumed cause from the actual one.

Question 04This role will not manage the executive teams it advises. Tell us about a time you influenced senior leaders to change direction without having direct authority over them.Influence without authority is the core of this role. Be specific about how you did it.

Question 05Which metrics do you regularly use when assessing business performance?The ones you actually rely on, and why they tell you what others miss.

Question 06Imagine John has acquired a business doing £8m revenue. Growth has stalled for two years despite increasing marketing spend.Walk us through:·The first things you would investigate·The questions you would ask leadership·How you would determine where growth is constrained·What your first 90 days would look like

Question 07Have you worked across multiple businesses simultaneously?If so, tell us:·How many businesses·What sectors·What your role was

Question 08Tell us about a major commercial decision that didn't work. What did you learn, and what would you do differently today?How you handle a decision that went wrong tells us more than your wins.

Question 09What are your salary expectations?

Question 10Notice period

Applications are reviewed personally. If we want to speak with you, you'll hear within 5 working days. There is one position.

You won't run a single company. You'll work out where growth has stalled across a portfolio of businesses, and help fix it.

Improving one companyisn't the opportunity.

Thirty years building,scaling and buying businesses.