About Us

Darryl is a dynamic, driven Business Mentor and Coach with over 20 years of experience and passion for creating successful outcomes for founder-led businesses. He is a great connector, team builder, problem solver, and inspirer – showing the way through complexity to simplicity.

He has built 2 international multi-million turnover businesses; one now operating in 16 countries. His quick and analytical approach cuts through to the core issues quickly and identifying the context. He challenges the status quo and gets consistent, repeatable and reliable business results.

Originating in Australia, Darryl’s first career was as an Engineer in the Power Industry. Building businesses brought him to the UK in 2003 where he quickly developed a reputation for combining systems thinking with great creativity to get results in challenging situations.

A keen competitive cyclist, he also has a B Eng (Mech) Engineering and an MBA.

Having worked in technology, telecoms, consumer electronics, payments, media and publishing, Kevin has enjoyed an interesting career history that embraces product and services businesses at all stages of their journey.

Before joining Succession Plus he was CMO with The Panoply plc, a digitally native technology services company, founded in 2016, with the aim of identifying and acquiring best-of-breed specialist information technology and innovation consulting businesses. He joined The Panoply from Tungsten Network where he was Chief Commercial Officer.

Previous roles have included working with SMEs and large international businesses. Some highlights are Managing Director at the Emerging Payments Awards and the Prepaid Awards; Managing Director of Gx; Director of Sodexo Motivation Solutions; Global Marketing Director at BBC Worldwide; Product Group Marketing Manager with Sony UK.

His career started out in a completely different direction. His first two full-time roles were as a junior in an architect’s office and a civil engineering technician. Some of his drawings and designs were constructed and are still standing.

Charlie has a passion for making things better and, like others in the team, he is a great team-builder, problem solver, inspirer and connector.

An accomplished, well-rounded and experienced senior business leader, mentor and coach he has spent 20 years in the Corporate world at Senior European Board level taking EMEA revenue ahead of N America. he helped a number of mature SME companies evolve into dynamic, profitable organisations by consistently delivering added value business improvements that positively impacted profit performance.

For the last 17 years he’s managed change in a large number of SME’s resulting in more streamlined, more productive and profitable organisations, resulting in a number of successful exits. He sees the big picture, yet has a keen eye for detail. He makes a difference.

Throughout his career, he is known for gently challenging the status-quo with fact based proposals that deliver beyond the initial goals.

He is loving being a new Grandad, and also has a big green motorbike – it’s not electric, it’s a Kawasaki ZR750!

Sanjay Shah
Chartered Financial Planner & Managing Director
Smart Advisory Solutions

Sanjay has owned & grown several businesses throughout his career. The latest business he co-founded grew to over £50M turnover and subsequently sold to Private Equity. A topic that was often a cause for debate was how they were measuring their success. After all, it’s easy to get carried away focusing on profitability and growth. But what good is that in the long-run if you have unhappy clients? And is doubling your turnover really that much to celebrate if it’s being outpaced by costs?
Providing business consultancy to SMEs operating in financial services, manufacturing, and professional services Sanjay has over 30 years business experience of growing a firm from scratch, building the team and growing the business and eventually selling. His aim is to help other business owners to succeed in their own ambitions using a range of tools and experiences to avoid as many of the bear traps as possible.
His focus now is to help a small select number of clients to plan, grow & realise their life’s work through his advisory practice and extensive network of professional contacts in every facet of business life. He has developed a unique approach to the age all question of ‘how much is enough?’ by using his financial planning expertise to model the wealth required to live the life you want and matching that with the value of your business to ensure the timing and value is optimised without the ‘fear of running out of money’.
Sanjay is married and lives in leafy Buckinghamshire. The eldest of his two boys is following in his father’s footsteps and training to be a wealth manager himself, having read Business Economics at University.