Saltaire publisher recruits Dalai Lama to preach the responsible business message

JOHN Peters took what he describes as an "eye watering" pay cut to follow his dream - and has never been happier.

"This is a get rich slow business," he said, "a brick by brick operation which is being built author by author and customer by customer. But we are on an upward curve having grown by more than 20 per cent last year following similar growth the before. While still small we are no longer a micro business. "

His company Greenleaf Publishing currently has a turnover of more than £600,000 and 15 staff - mainly graduates from regional universities, including Bradford.

"When I look at what we've done so far, its not bad and it's still early days," said John who branched out on his own after 11 years with Bingley-based Emerald Publishing where he was first operations director and then managing director.

It was John's increasing interest in and commitment to sustainable and responsible business which led him to make the break.

He said: "In 2010 the field of responsible and sustainable business was something I had become interested in and I didn't feel I was getting backing for that at Emerald. We parted friends and I am still in touch with founder Keith Howard.

"I felt it was my last shot at doing something seriously independently."

Selling his stake in Emerald enabled him and his wife Amanda Briggs, to launch their own operation with funding from Finance Yorkshire.

"I wanted to stay in publishing and build something.The interesting thing with publishing is that you can reach a lot of people even as a relatively small operation, particularly if you are going through universities.

"My idea was to be a mainly online publisher but it didn't come along as I hoped, mainly due to difficulties in getting contributions from authors.

"Around the same time I heard that one of the few specialists in the sustainable and responsible business field, Greenleaf Publishing in Sheffield,was looking for a buyer. Under the terms of our Finance Yorkshire loan we couldn't use the funds for an acquisition so I succeeded in raising more funding from US-based OKS which I knew from my Emerald days which enabled us to buy Greenleaf," said John who spent much of his first two years as an independent operator negotiating finance deals.

"The acquisition took us from the position of having an idea and some capital but no product to having something to trade through a collection of books and other intellectual property with which people could identify," said John.

The move to Salts Mill from West Park in Leeds not only gears the firm up for more expansion, it also matches Greenleaf's ethos.

John said: "A key consideration when seeking a new base was good public transport connections. Here we are next to the railway station, have regular bus services and some of our team cycle on the canal towpath to work from Leeds.

"We need to be able to walk the talk. As the world's leading specialist publisher in areas of sustainable and responsible business, including good environmental management, we need to be careful about transparency and not act in a way that could embarrass us and lose us credibility."

John says his young team feel that they on a mission along with Greenleaf's authors from academia and business and that their work is important.

"It's gratifying that people enjoy coming to work because they feel that they are making a small contribution towards helping to make the world a bit better through our publications .

"We monitored more than 50,000 downloads of our titles last year and that's a big reach into a lot of people from our little operation here in Saltaire," he said.

In 2012 the old Greenleaf business published about 12 books and two academic journals.This year the business will publish around 40 to 50 books and six journals, and has quadrupled its publishing output in the past three years.

Greenleaf Publishing may be a niche business but it has friends in high places through burgeoning partnerships with initiatives such as the United Nations Global Compact - the world's largest sustainability initiative backed by 12,000 businesses; the UN's Principles for Responsible Management Education working with business schools worldwide, including the University of Bradford School of Management, and working with the organisers of the annual the World Economic Summit at Davos, Switzerland, and the International Labour Organisation.

Greenleaf's titles include a book on responsible leadership by the former Shell boss Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, a warts and all account of his time leading the oil giant.

In September, the company will publish a book by one of its Dutch authors entitled "In Conversation with theDdalai Lama", which will include the spiritual leader's thoughts on business, society,economics and the state of the world.

The book was commissioned by Greenleaf's publishing director Rebecca Marsh, a former Emerald colleague of John's.

She said: "I was discussing another book with the author who has had a career in banking and law when he mentioned that he had known the Dalai Lama since his student days. The book will bring together senior business people and even the Dutch royal family on the role of business in society. It includes a dialogue with the Dalai Lama who will speak at the launch in Brussels in September."

John Peters, who was a management consultant and academic, including in Australia and Canada, before going into publishing with Emerald, is frank about his business' false start but believes recognising and admitting mistakes is part of building a successful venture.

"It's about being open to opportunities and not being too stubborn. We made a few wrong calls along the way and thought we were going down a river but in fact were in a tributary heading for a dead end and had to get back into the river.

"As a consultant I came across senior executives who thought they had learned everything and couldn't make mistakes,"he said.

Greenleaf is still at a stage where John and his team know most of their internationally scattered authors and many of their customers personally.

"It's very interesting getting back to that level of intimate connection. Hopefully, as we grow, we'll be able to maintain a high degree of that personal contact. This is a people business and relationships are very important .

" One of the best things about working at Greenleaf is that I'm no longer ruled by a diary full of meetings. My working life used to be planned hour by hour. We don't have many meetings here. We discuss matters and,. if necessary, it's my responsibility to make a call, for better or worse.

"My typical day can go from presenting a strategy review to our board and investors to popping out to get tea bags for the office. I like it that way.

"Saltaire is one of my favourite places and we are based in an iconic historic building created by Sir Titus Salt, a Victorian entrepreneur and philanthropist who believed in doing business responsibly and that matches Greenleaf's mission,"said John.