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Leading and inspirational UK business coach, Rob Northfield is a specialist in transforming attitudes and behaviours that undermine business success. Having worked with leaders and teams across a diverse range of multinational businesses, Rob’s inspirational approach has reaped rewards in terms of motivation, performance and positive thinking.

With an emphasis on self-belief, understanding, attitude, leadership skills and the power of positive thinking, Rob is passionate about making a difference to people’s lives both in business and personally; believing that everyone has the power to change. 

Born in the East End of London, Rob’s under privileged upbringing brought home to him the importance of hard work, grit and determination. Having left school at 15 with no qualifications, Rob became a talented footballer at his beloved Chelsea but unfortunately had to quickly relinquish his dreams of turning professional through injury. Instead, he joined Beecham, the pharmaceutical company, as a transport supervisor before quickly rising through the ranks to become the company’s youngest MD, at the age of 25. Quickly gaining a reputation as a trouble–shooter, Rob developed his management skills and gained experience of a wide range of business and change management issues.

It was a fear of public speaking that led Rob to attend a Dale Carnegie training course on Leadership and Communication at which he recognised his autocratic style of management had to change in order to benefit both his business and personal life. This was a dramatic and emotive new era for Rob who believes self-reflection is critical to leadership success.

He decided to leave Beecham to teach public speaking in Dale Carnegie’s South East division, becoming responsible for sales performance at the same time. Within a year, Rob had transformed the regions performance, posting the best results of any UK region. In 1997 he took up the challenge of turning round the failing North of England division, which four years later, became only the second worldwide to achieve the lucrative Founders Award – recognising year-on-year strong growth, performance and quality. Rob himself describes this success as stemming from “taking normal people and getting extraordinary performance”.

He retired in 2002 at the age of 48, but in 2007 he set up 2inspire, bringing his focus back onto helping business leaders achieve their dream and become truly inspirational in their leadership style, sharing with them his own success secrets.

Rob’s continued drive, focus and flair for opportunities, has led to the rapid growth of 2inspire. Built on his values, vision and mission, 2inspire is now positioned as a leading Leadership Development Consultancy working with clients such as Wensleydale Dairy Products, National Flexible, Keycare Ltd, Harratts Group, Cedar Court Hotels, Esselte, JM Glendinning, Yorkshire Bank, JCT600 and Bettys and Taylors of Harrogate.

Rob’s passion for giving back also extends to him and his wife Judi adopting a family in the Gambia. Following several trips to the region, Rob and Judi both decided that they wanted to make a real difference to the lives of those people living there. Since that decision, they have paid for the family’s seven children to be educated and built a school in the village for 500 children.