Tools, Materials & Tech

Russell Mills

ServiceM8 Specialist & Innovation Consultant

LinkedIn ServiceM8 Gold Partner, Mills Consulting Group PortfolioExec Profile

About Russell

Early Life and Career

Russell Mills earned his Mechanical Engineering degree in 1993, launching a career that would span more than three decades across engineering, sales, digital customer service, and technology innovation. After early roles in industrial and engineering sales, he moved into SME sustainability research at Teesside University, where he helped local businesses with futureproofing strategies. He later ran his own retail and training business in Middlesbrough, building the commercial instincts and hands-on experience that would define his consultancy career.

Professional Background

From around 2010, Russell began focusing specifically on trades and service businesses, working with over 100 clients across the following decade. He became a specialist in CRM and marketing automation before co-founding Mills Consulting Group with Julian Mills, becoming a ServiceM8 UK Gold Partner and helping hundreds of trades businesses systematise and automate their operations. Around 2017, he founded Chat Heroes, a manned live chat service that championed human-powered customer engagement over automated chatbots, featured extensively in Marketing Aspects Magazine. More recently, Russell joined Valuechain to work on the CW4.0 programme, a multi-million pound initiative helping manufacturing SMEs adopt Industry 4.0 digital technologies, before taking on the role of Innovation Lead at Alt Labs, applying his engineering supply chain experience to rail and transport innovation including a contract with Transport for Wales.

TrainAR Academy Spotlight

Russell is featured as a Spotlight Creator at TrainAR Academy, where he shares insights on trades business automation, field service management, and digital transformation for SMEs. He brings a practitioner’s perspective grounded in over a decade of hands-on consulting with UK trades businesses.

Personal Values

Russell’s core philosophy is that technology should enhance human connection, not replace it. From his advocacy for manned live chat over chatbots to his work systemising trades businesses with practical tools, he consistently champions solutions that give smaller companies access to the same operational advantages as larger enterprises, while keeping the human element at the centre.