More about Rad Dougall

I didn’t tell you enough on the first page about me? Well here’s the rest…

What have I done?

Pre 2007

I got two degrees from the University of Teesside in Middlesbrough but then decided to do something else. Anything else. For two years I had my messing around phase after university, finally landing in a Restaurant as a low-level chef. Within 6 months I was managing the place and stayed there for another 2 years.

I learnt a lot from working there with all kinds of people both as customers and staff. This started my belief in the power of customers expectation and the problems you can cause when you break it.

2010

I went on to start digital agency Studioworks, that grew into a team of 8 in under 4 years and worked with brands like Fat Face and the Dorset Chamber of Commerce. I had a lot of fun starting this but there was also a lot of pain. You have to love what you’re doing!

I was a Butcher at Meetdraw from 2010 to 2017 really enjoyed arranging fantastic events for Bournemouth & Poole’s creative industry folk. We’ve done beach parties, pool parties, parties on the pier and parties in posh restaurants. We love’d what we did and how we did it.

2011

While running Studioworks, I setup internet infrastructure and hosting company Lumiserv with a friend and colleague, from ITSB. It was a logical fit for Studioworks (the web agency) and ITSB (the IT support company) since we both used its services on a daily basis.

Because I’m very much into online software, communities and apps, I became an advisor on all things digital for aviation training community, Aerotraining in 2011. The site growing steadily every day and I know that the two pilots I work with will make it an awesome success.

2013

In October I sold digital agency Studioworks, to Bright Blue Day group and joined them as their Group Head of Digital. We merged in the development teams, clients and processes very successfully over 3 months.

2014

Six months after the merger of Studioworks and Bright Blue Day, we took the decision to take the Studioworks brand back to the market with a different proposition from Bright Blue Day. BBD Studioworks was born, of which I became the Managing Director.

At the beginning of 2014 I again put my food knowledge to good use by advising and local lunch delivery company, Lunch’d. Oli uses seasonal and local ingredients to create awesome comfort foods and super salads from his kitchen in Canford Cliffs. Pop on the website and you can order one for the next day (provided you work in Bournemouth & Poole for now).

Having successfully set up BBD Studioworks, I left to concentrate on growing managed DevOps & infrastructure company, Lumiserv into a company that retains its awesome ethos, culture and customer service no matter how large it gets. Lumiserv is all about helping developers concentrate on code and businesses sleep at night.

2017

We grew Lumiserv over 400% in 2 and a bit years, with engineers in 4 different countries and several household name clients, such as Minicabit.com. The business was then sold to Scholar Web Services who needed to provide managed services and DevOps alongside their existing physical hosting and networking capabilities.

Following the acquisition of Lumiserv, I moved on to work with Elite Marine, a British yacht refit company based in Poole, as their Commercial Director.

2018

After less than a year at Elite Marine, we had grown the company by 180% in terms of headcount, turnover and more importantly, profits. We had also expanded the team to deliver more trades internally including boat builders, joiners, upholsterers and engineers.

2018 was also the year I launched Radical Rally – luxury supercar tours (rallies). This was born out of my passion for cars, supercars mostly… but really just because I made an awesome purchase earlier in the year and wanted to drive it across Europe with other like minded people.

2019

Following on from the success of the Radical Rallies, we launched Radical Autoworks, a luxury car care and detailing (high end valeting) company. It’s still early days, but we’ve worked on some fantastic cars and have launched some fantastic events for their owners such as the Supercar Socials meets in Poole.

Later in the year I left Elite Marine to focus on my other projects after successfully getting the company to half a million turnover in a little under 3 years. The main focus now being back in my roots of IT, helping ecommerce and distribution companies with their particular set of IT problems via my company Formulate.

2020

Coronavirus! 🤔

Stay tuned to see what happens next. I have a lot of ideas for this year that have been somewhat scuppered but I’m ready to go as soon as we can again.

…I’ve also made a bunch of mistakes along the way. It’s inevitable. My only rule is to not make the same mistake twice.

Life events and funny facts… well maybe

More stuff about me, I’ll let you be the judge of its interest or hilarity value…

• I was a Community First Responder with South Western Ambulance Service for 5 years. Even as a volunteer I’ve saved five people using CPR and a Defibrillator in anger – yes I am keeping count!
• I got a bit into running at one time and even did the Great North Run. I completed the 13.1 miles in 1:57:57.
• I was planning on swimming around Brownsea Island one year (the race is over 2 miles), but the entries closed before I could get one – who knew that so many people wanted to swim round an Island in Poole Harbour.
• I used to do the Korean martial art of Hapkido. I was on the team that won the group display at the European Championships in 2005.
• While on our way to the coast for Christmas 1996 in South Africa, we were held up at gun point just outside Johannesburg. They stole everything. We got away with our lives.
• My father was a pretty good Formula 2 racing driver in his day. He also raced in the Le Mans 24 hour. There are almost as many posts about him on Google as there are about me – and the internet is my industry! If you Google Rad Dougall, the panel to the right of the search results shows a Wikipedia entry about him – His name is also Rad Dougall.

Get email from me

I send a few select posts by email, not usually more than one every other week though. It’s usually about technology, the behaviour of consumers or a cross between technology and the way people use it. I try to provide tips you can use, interesting insights and things you should know in our digital world.