Your Guest Speaker: Harry Welby-Cooke

Harry Welby-Cooke is an entrepreneur, professional speaker and a leading business and executive coach.

He is the Southern African Co-Master Licensee of the largest business coaching company globally – ActionCOACH, which has served thousands of businesses and their owners around the world over the past two decades. Harry launched the brand locally 10 years ago, which today has an extensive national footprint and African representation in Namibia, Kenya and Nigeria.

Harry is co-creator of the ‘Saleability Model’, a business model created to build businesses for sale. He is also the founder and CEO of LegacyBRANDZ, a new venture aimed at businesses with purpose.

Committed to the coaching and mentoring industry in South Africa, Harry was elected and served as National President of COMENSA (Coaches and Mentors of South Africa) in 2012 and 2013.

As an articulate, confident and informative speaker, Harry has been invited to give talks at many business events, conferences and expos. His brutally honest yet highly entertaining manner is focused on breaking down the seemingly complex into easily executable actions.

He has appeared in countless business publications and has been interviewed numerous times on radio and television. He is a regular advice columnist for Entrepreneur magazine, Destiny magazine, Fin24 and SA Franchise Warehouse.

What makes Harry unique? A massive vision on what entrepreneurship can accomplish individually and collectively. Harry not only believes that people’s dreams of owning their own business are within reach, but also that this is the catalyst for creating the growth, employment and wealth needed on the African continent.

Career Path

Before spreading his entrepreneurial wings, Harry spent 12 inspiring years at Standard Bank. He worked his way up the ranks, filling a number of management positions across retail banking, credit and risk management and providing a very broad based business background. He quickly realised that although many entrepreneurs have the passion, vision and even business plan to back their ideas, they often fail to bear fruit.

In 2006, as a now corporate refugee, Harry left the sheltered corporate world to open his own management consultancy. In 2007, he co-launchedActionCOACH in Southern Africa.

The entrepreneurial knock-on effect of his role in developing business coaching across Southern Africa, is what Harry says excites him the most. As head ofActionCOACH, which has over 1,000 offices in 59 countries, he delivers its proven business development systems to tens of thousands of business owners every week - owners who turn to business coaching to get the freedom and lifestyle they sought when they first went into business for themselves.

Harry is giving other aspiring entrepreneurs, who mostly emanate from executive corporate positions, an opportunity to run their own coaching business. They, in-turn coach and mentor business owners to grow profitable companies that contribute to economic growth.

Awards

• Rising Star Award – Entrepreneurship category 2014
• Finalist: Best Client Results –ActionCOACH EMEA Conference 2009
• ActionMAN award –ActionCOACH EMEA Conference 2008 

Professional Memberships

• Member: COMENSA (Coaches and Mentors of South Africa)
• Member: International Business Coaching Institute
• Professional Member: Professional Speakers Association of Southern Africa

Social Responsibility

Harry is an active supporter of Reach for a Dream Foundation. He believes the future of every person starts with a dream, and when given the ‘permission’ to follow our dreams, we can move mountains.

Personal

Harry is happily married and a father to a tribe of three gorgeous children (Tristan 16, Hayley 12 and Jonathan 8). A motorsport enthusiast, he also loves the outdoors, all racquet sports, is a goalkeeper coach, an average guitarist and a new, but still only noisy, drummer.