Alan Oatham

I was doing relatively well with the bank, and they relocated me a few times getting involved with business development, this was back in 1999 and I started to become a little disillusioned, there were good propositions but there wasn’t an appetite for certain kinds of business in that climate and attitudes were not the way they had previously been. It became frustrating so I left the bank in ’99 and set up my own financial consultancy.

The business I set up was looking at import/export finance, financing of businesses, looking at their cashflow and getting the right business finance for them, it was largely progressive, moving businesses forward. In the early 2000’s one of my clients really liked what I was doing so asked me to be more involved with them, I was there with them pretty much full-time which led to me running their steel operation in Wales, which unfortunately had lawsuits filed against them from the Unites States, which ultimately meant that we could not carry on. They had some very serious investors who asked for a solution, and we found the solution in acquiring another business that was ailing but had a track record, so we basically put one business into another. That worked well for a while and once all was wrapped up my role became redundant. That was in the mid 2000’s and that was when I met my now business partner Darran Hathaway.

Darran and I both had interviews to become the licensees for different regions for a company called Debt Doctor, this was back in 2006 and we were on the same training course, Darran took over the Sussex area and I took over the SL post code region, dealing with individuals specific debt problems. I liaised with the franchisor to arrange a split between dealing with business debt problems as well as personal, because that’s where my expertise and knowledge lied. I then acquired another region which included the RG postcode so had Debt Doctor Berkshire with a few consultants working for me.

It was all going rather well until the franchisor had some problems and they ceased trading, which left us, as franchisees, with a portfolio of clients that we couldn’t service because the franchisor was FSA regulated at the time, but as we were under their license, we weren’t. Darran had already exited that organisation in 2010 and had set up his own business with someone else, and eventually my portfolio went into that business, and we worked closely together. At that time, we were 50/50 personal and business and we carried on in that format for a while, but then in 2017 we decided to split the business with the other party going off to look after the personal, that’s when Darran and I established R2B to move forward largely on the corporate side.

We help business owners that are in financial difficulty and wish to get that resolved. The aim is to turnaround the business – hence the ‘R2B’ red to black negative cashflow to positive cashflow. However, if we can’t turn the business around, we then look for the soft land and soft exit for the business owner. When we meet people that are in a very stressed position, they often believe that there isn’t a solution – it maybe that there is a solution that they initially felt uncomfortable with but when we work it through with them, they can see that it could be a benefit. We make sure that all the regulatory requirements are being met.

The key message is – the sooner the better.”