TechCentralTechCentral
    Facebook Twitter YouTube LinkedIn
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentral TechCentral
    NEWSLETTER
    • News

      Crypto is not too big to fail

      23 June 2022

      The great crypto crash: the fallout, and what happens next

      22 June 2022

      Winter 1, Eskom 0

      22 June 2022

      What it will take to bring the Guptas to justice

      22 June 2022

      Inflation in South Africa spikes higher

      22 June 2022
    • World

      Crypto crash survivors could become ‘tomorrow’s Amazons’

      23 June 2022

      Tether to launch a stablecoin tied to the British pound

      22 June 2022

      Tech giants form metaverse standards body, without Apple

      22 June 2022

      There are still unresolved matters in Twitter deal, Musk says

      21 June 2022

      5G subscriptions to top one billion in 2022: Ericsson

      21 June 2022
    • In-depth

      Goodbye, Internet Explorer – you really won’t be missed

      19 June 2022

      Oracle’s database dominance threatened by rise of cloud-first rivals

      13 June 2022

      Everything Apple announced at WWDC – in less than 500 words

      7 June 2022

      Sheryl Sandberg’s ad empire leaves a complicated legacy

      2 June 2022

      Tulipmania meets the real economy at WhatsApp speed

      30 May 2022
    • Podcasts

      How your organisation can triage its information security risk

      22 June 2022

      Everything PC S01E06 – ‘Apple Silicon’

      15 June 2022

      The youth might just save us

      15 June 2022

      Everything PC S01E05 – ‘Nvidia: The Green Goblin’

      8 June 2022

      Everything PC S01E04 – ‘The story of Intel – part 2’

      1 June 2022
    • Opinion

      Has South Africa’s advertising industry lost its way?

      21 June 2022

      Rob Lith: What Icasa’s spectrum auction means for SA companies

      13 June 2022

      A proposed solution to crypto’s stablecoin problem

      19 May 2022

      From spectrum to roads, why fixing SA’s problems is an uphill battle

      19 April 2022

      How AI is being deployed in the fight against cybercriminals

      8 April 2022
    • Company Hubs
      • 1-grid
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Amplitude
      • Atvance Intellect
      • Axiz
      • BOATech
      • CallMiner
      • Digital Generation
      • E4
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • IBM
      • Kyocera Document Solutions
      • Microsoft
      • Nutanix
      • One Trust
      • Pinnacle
      • Skybox Security
      • SkyWire
      • Tarsus on Demand
      • Videri Digital
      • Zendesk
    • Sections
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud computing
      • Consumer electronics
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Energy
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Motoring and transport
      • Public sector
      • Science
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home»People»A guy, some tattoos, and a business

    A guy, some tattoos, and a business

    People By Craig Wilson11 December 2012
    Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email

    Rich Mulholland started his working career as a roadie, hauling gear on and off stage and operating the lighting at gigs for the likes of Iron Maiden and Def Leppard. Now 38, Mulholland runs Missing Link, South Africa’s largest presentation specialist, and co-founded a “perspective lab” and consulting firm called 21Tanks.

    “I grew up on the posh, west end of Glasgow,” Mulholland tells me by way of introduction. “My dad worked for Scottish television. In 1983, he came to South Africa for his mother’s funeral and, while he was here, the SABC offered him a job and to move his entire family to Johannesburg.”

    Over the years that followed, the Mulholland family gradually moved to Cape Town — one after the other — but the young Richard decided to “hedge” his “bets” and now splits his time between Cape Town (weekends) and Johannesburg (weekdays).

    “I’m only a dad in Cape Town,” Mulholland says. His son and daughter live with his ex-wife and he usually flies down on Fridays to catch his son’s kickboxing classes. “I live right next to my ex, and we get on very well. I wasn’t a great dad originally; I was more a personal assistant to their mom. I’m much better now — now I go to Cape Town to be a dad.”

    The youngest of three siblings, Mulholland says his two sisters wanted to instil a sense of pride in him about his heritage and so they took him on a tour of Scotland. “It gave me a sense of belonging and connectedness, and I want to give that to my kids, too, so they’re coming with me when I go to Edinburgh for TED next year.”

    Mulholland became involved with TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design), the global set of conferences run and owned by the Sapling Foundation, in 2005.

    “That year, I attended the first TED global conference,” he says. “They wanted audience members to do three-minute talks on stage. I did one called ‘First Impressions Lie’, which went down pretty well.”

    Kenyan-based technologist Erik Hersman, a friend of Mulholland’s, is a TED senior fellow and introduces Mulholland as “the greatest speaker I’ve ever seen” when the two share a stage. It was Hersman who introduced Mulholland to Logan McClure, the programme manager for TED fellows, which led to him training TED speakers last year. “I don’t get paid for it, but it’s a good story to tell and it’s great when you’re pitching to new clients.”

    Accidental entrepreneur
    Mulholland describes himself as an “accidental entrepreneur” and says that starting the various companies he has over the years all happened by chance.

    Through a fairly circuitous career path, Mulholland went on to start Missing Link in 1998 and focused on making interactive CD-ROMs. The business only later morphed into presentations and strategies around them. “I read Harry Beckwith’s Selling the Invisible and that was the pivot, the moment of clarity. It changed everything for me.”

    At the time, Missing Link had video editors, designers, animators and other creative staff. Mulholland says he started telling staff that when people asked what they did the answer was that they were “presentation strategists”.

    “Everything else was a by-product. I didn’t want Missing Link to be defined by video or design. I wanted it to be about strategy.” Strategy accounts for only 3% of turnover now, but selling Missing Link as a presentation company became a “self-fulfilling prophecy”.

    “Now the challenge is we’ve built enough of a reputation, [and so] should I jettison that and say we don’t need presentations to take us to the next level? I’m at a bit of a crossroads, actually. It’s hard to read the label from inside the bottle.”

    Tree house
    Missing Link, which is headquartered in Fourways, north of Sandton, has arguably the most novel office space of any South African company. It recently won an award from Inc. magazine for the “most creative use of material” in a competition to identify the best offices on the planet.

    “I remember telling people we’re the only company in the finals from Africa,” Mulholland says. “But then we were probably the only guys from Africa in the competition.

    With its fireman’s pole, tattoo parlour, shooting gallery, themed office spaces and cubicles — and Mulholland’s own office, which is modelled after a tree house — it’s certainly a unique working environment. It’s all about making an impression.

    “You can spend a million rand on an office and make it unremarkable. A rule for every engagement is that you’re meant to go home and at some point after work say ‘I met this crazy guy’, or ‘I went to this great office’. It needs to transcend discussion in the workplace.”

    Missing Link has won numerous awards over the years, and Mulholland says some of them haven’t even been for the best presentations, but rather for compelling stories.

    Despite his appearance — wild hair, heavily tattooed arms, casual garb — Mulholland describes himself as an “absolute introvert” who often takes a staff member to conferences with him so he’ll have someone to talk to and so he won’t have to deal with talking to the strangers around him on his own.

    When he isn’t speaking at conferences or pitching to new clients, Mulholland says he reads a lot, spends as much time as possible with his girlfriend, and with his children.

    His reading habits drew him to Good Reads, a social network of sorts for the bookish. “Most social media offers so little value,” he says. “We need contextual networks, not social networks. Instagram is a great example of that, or it can be when people use it for good photos rather than every single picture of their kids. Random photos of your kids belong on Facebook, not on Instagram. But people get to choose how they use these networks, I guess.”

    Mulholland’s also a keen freeboarder and snowboarder. (A freeboard is a six-wheeled skateboard designed to behave like a snowboard.) But by far his biggest passion is motorcycles. He owns three Vespa scooters, two Harley-Davidsons, two Triumphs and a Honda CB650.  — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media

    21Tanks bigpicture Missing Link Rich Mulholland Richard Mulholland
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email
    Previous ArticleLinkedIn signs up 2m SA users
    Next Article Mxit firms up retrenchments

    Related Posts

    US allies urged to shun Huawei equipment: report

    23 November 2018

    Podcast | Digital terrestrial television: the state of play in SA

    18 October 2017

    Interview: Roger McCleery on the future of motoring

    18 October 2017
    Add A Comment

    Comments are closed.

    Promoted

    Calabrio paves way for SA’s cloud contact centre WFO journey alongside AWS

    23 June 2022

    More than card machines – iKhokha diversifies to reach more SMEs

    22 June 2022

    What does it cost to be a student in 2022?

    22 June 2022
    Opinion

    Has South Africa’s advertising industry lost its way?

    21 June 2022

    Rob Lith: What Icasa’s spectrum auction means for SA companies

    13 June 2022

    A proposed solution to crypto’s stablecoin problem

    19 May 2022

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2022 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.