Jess Coles – Promotions History
Top Appraisal Grades at Board Director Level
“Jess has put his heart and soul into turning around Petroplan and the results are truly remarkable. Jess has been a pleasure to work with for his drive and hunger to transform the business, for his challenging approach to creating the best business we can and for his incredibly high level of contribution. Jess is an outstanding performer”
Andrew Spears, Petroplan CEO, from annual appraisal form with top performance grade at end of year 1
“I think you have done a fantastic job and set yourself very high standards. You have made an outstanding contribution. Unquestionable. You have managed to get so much done and are a role model that people in your teams can learn from. I am very proud of you and you have done an outstanding job. “
Andrew Spears, Petroplan CEO, from annual appraisal with top performance grade at end of year 2
“Jess has done an excellent job managing his team through all the different challenges they have faced. I really like the way that Jess is pro-active about driving this forward. He does so in a very organised and effective manner. Jess is proving to be a very strong Group FC and he has certainly delivered beyond my expectations.”
James Davenport, CFO, Innocent Drinks, comments from my annual appraisal form with a “Very Strong Performer” grade
13 Promotions, consistently gained through my career
Below is my corporate career history, including 13 promotions (job title changes) in as many years (Nov 1997 to Jan 2013 [15.4 years] with a 3 year career break (15.4-3=12.4 years).
Since my Group Finance Director Role in Petroplan, I set up the Emerson Nash Group (2016), to pursue my love of growing business and teaching managers and leaders how to increase team and business performance.
1997 – Trainee
My first career job starting in November 1997. I came back from a year of travelling, found and started an Insurance Role within 2 weeks and had the EY offer within 2 months. [I made three job applications and interviewed at all three. Promotion 1]
1998 – Senior Trainee
Internal promotion after passing exams and gaining the required experience. [Promotion 2, Year 1]
1999 – Accountant
Internal promotion after passing exams and working to gain enough experience to become a qualified accountant [Promotion 3, Year 2]
2000 – Audit Senior
Internal promotion after passing exams and qualifying as a Chartered Accountant with ICAEW [Promotion 4, Year 3]
2000 – Commercial Finance Manager
After qualifying, I left practice and started in my first finance role within industry (joining the in-house team of a company). In this role, I was assisting my boss provide commercial advice to the partners of the three most profitable divisions of PA Consulting. [External promotion. Promotion 5, Year 3]
2001 – Commercial Finance Manager
My boss left PA, and I was given full responsibility for all three practices. Helping 20 or so partners improve the profitability of their client contracts was significant step up in responsibility and pressure.
2002 – Commercial Analyst
I joined Williams Lea when it had sales of around £150m, growing at around 35% per annum. This was a great entrepreneurial company with a strong culture of meritocracy. If you did well, you were promoted. If you didn’t you were asked to leave. [Promotion 6, Year 5]
2003 – Finance Manager
I was promoted into my first line management role, looking after a team of 4 staff. I met my best boss ever in this role and what she taught me laid the foundations for my leadership success. [Promotion 7, Year 6]
2004 – Divisional Finance Manager
Every year I was given more people to manage and more responsibility. I left Williams Lea managing three teams of 10/11 people in total. [Promotion 8, Year 7]
Corporate Career Break
I took a corporate career break of 3 years to set up my own company. We grew the business to £1m in sales within 3 years. The financial crash of 2008 happened, Lehman’s collapsed and recession hit. I decided to go back into corporate life.
I managed teams of up to 15 staff (employees and contractors)
2008 – International Financial Controller
I joined innocent as they made their first redundancies, a few months after Lehmans collapsed. I was job hunting for two weeks before starting at innocent looking after their international expansion. Innocent suffered its first drop in sales as a business, BUT was back into 20%+ growth within six months. The talent in the company was more than impressive.
This role was focused on helping the Country Managers grow their business and increase profitability. I had a small team to manage [Promotion 9, Year 8]
2009 – Group Financial Controller
Internal promotion to Group Financial Controller. This was my first reporting and compliance role. The number of staff to manage jumped up in this role. [Promotion 10, Year 9]
2010 – Senior Financial Controller (European Division)
This was my first experience of a very political corporate business. Who you knew was more important than being good at your job to progress.
I was involved in the project to split Foster Beer and Foster Wine into separate companies and list the wine business on the Australian Stock Exchange. The European business had over 40 legal entities to disentangle.
I led a team of 7/8 staff. [Promotion 11, Year 10]
2012 – Finance Director
I was promoted to my first Board Director role with this move. The company was about to go bust (it had almost run out of cash). I love a challenge and this was exactly the type of high-pressure situation I wanted – to demonstrate what I could do.
I started leading a team of 17 staff, who as a team were doing the very basics. [Promotion 12, Year 12]
2013 – Group Finance Director
Gained an internal promotion within 6 months of joining, after making significant progress with improving team and business performance.
I was consistently given more staff and teams to manage. I finished this role leading 3 teams of 35 staff in total. [Promotion 13, Year 13]