About Us

Our Purpose and Promise

We help family owned businesses preserve what made them special while driving the change needed to achieve their full potential. The outcome we always deliver is:

A more effective and happier leader
A higher performing leadership team
A healthier culture with more engaged workers
More collaboration, innovation, accountability and leadership at all levels of the organization
Significantly better results

What Sets Us Apart

We have a wealth of experience actually navigating challenges and opportunities similar to those that you are experiencing. We've been there and actually done it, not just studied it and consulted. We use the word partner in our name with intention because we are business building partners rather than drive-by consultants. You can count on us to be in-it-to-win-it with you and your team because your success is the ultimate measure of our purpose and value. Here are seven reasons to believe our promise:

Results — Demonstrated track record as leaders and business building partners

Strategic and Pragmatic — Uncommon ability to bridge strategy and execution, grounded in experiences ranging from factory line worker, engineer, and marketer to CEO and independent Board director

Best Practices — Trained at top notch companies, and sharpened in smaller, nimbler situations

Breadth — Experience across many industries, businesses, and roles, from public to private and family owned

Skilled — World class marketing, innovation, and selling capabilities, built on a rigorous engineering, analytical, and operational foundation

Resourceful — Supported by a proven network of strategic partners

Trustworthy — Unwavering principles and core values, confirmed by credible references. See testimonials

Our Story

JDR Growth Partners was founded in 2014 by Jude Rake. Before founding JDR, Jude served in multiple C-level roles including CEO for eleven years. In each of these roles he built and led successful leadership teams that transformed several businesses at well known companies such as Clorox, PepsiCo, and SC Johnson, as well as family owned and private equity-backed companies. Over time Jude was increasingly asked by former colleagues and business partners for help with strategic planning, leadership development, and team building. Jude decided to force-multiply his leadership influence by forming JDR Growth Partners to help multiple business leaders eager to improve their performance and results.

Our Core Values

Perseverance - We have a burning desire to win, and we believe the combination of courage, hustle, teamwork and resourcefulness can overcome many shortcomings

Growth Mindset - We are relentless learners in our quest to be the best we can be, and we are fueled by uncommon curiosity and the lifelong pursuit of learning and growth

Integrity - We operate transparently, deliver on our promises and remain steadfastly focused on doing the right things

Teamwork - We believe we can be much more powerful than the sum of our parts if we collaborate respectfully, embrace contention constructively and surround ourselves with diversity of thought and talent that are complementary

Helping Hand - We find the utmost gratification in helping others achieve more than they ever thought possible. It's the main reason we do what we do

What We do

We adapted best practices learned at world class companies to business situations in which success requires more strategic focus and commitment to achieve profitable growth from fewer resources.

At JDR, we subscribe to Dwight Eisenhower's credo that it's about the planning, not just the plan. To fuel transformational growth, we use a market-driven strategic planning process that encourages leaders and difference-makers at all levels to step up. This leads to heightened collaboration, alignment, accountability and growth throughout the organization. We also provide 1:1 and collective team coaching to cultivate professional and personal growth and fuel higher performing teams.

Our unique strategic planning process helps leaders exponentially expand and force-multiply their leadership influence by engaging key difference-makers in helping us define what success looks like and how we're going to achieve it together. For the team leader, our process is an excellent tool for assessing teammates and solidifying succession plans. Most importantly, it always fuels changes that lead to improved team performance, results and personal fulfillment. Guaranteed.

Rather than a cookie cutter approach, we tailor our work to the unique strengths of our client. We are respectful of the core values that contributed to our client's success as we help them articulate and execute a rational and inspiring plan for the future when cultural renovation or transformational change is necessary.

The result is a strategic yet nimble approach that focuses precious resources where they add the most value, shuns lower value work and unnecessary bureaucracy, and elevates talent management and development to the top of the priority list. You and your team will thrive in a performance-based culture of collaboration and innovation that keeps the customer and your core values at the center of everything.

"We did an exhaustive, nationwide search for someone who could help us step back from our family office and rethink what we should provide our clients and how we provide it. We screened plenty of consultants with academic approaches, but we really hoped we would get someone who could help us deliver. With Jude we got both.

JDR combined the strategic rigor that we needed to reimagine the business with the operational expertise to help us execute ambitious new plans. He had a deep level of engagement and applied just the right touch to get the most out of very diverse constituencies and stakeholders. As a bonus – and probably the ingredient that is most glaringly missing from most of these engagements – Jude quickly gained our trust."

- Tracy Tunney Ward, CEO at Miramar Services

"Jude is leading a strategic planning process for us that has our executive team totally engaged, working together over an extended period to develop a compelling envisioned future. In the process, we have assessed our purpose and values, recognizing our strengths and weaknesses. We are creating the objectives, goals, strategies and metrics that will guide us through the exciting world we have ahead of us, meeting the challenges of technology advancement in the industries we serve.

Jude is an inspirational and motivational coach and respected mentor for our leadership team. He is helping us align our company's strategic vision and core values with those of our key customers and industry partners. His facilitation and leadership have helped encourage our team to move forward with greater confidence in our ability to achieve the growth to which we aspire."

- Steve McShane, Founder, Owner and CEO at Midtronics