Head Honchos that Inspire Growth

John O’Sullivan of Ten2Two, Susan Carroll of Scala- Advance and Giles Palmer, CEO and Founder of Brandwatch gave their views on guiding your team through growth at the Brighton Summit.

John spoke to us about the six words that for him described growth:

1. Ambition - “What does ambition mean to you?” asked John. It is important that you understand your ambition and surround yourself with people who have the same ambition as you.
2. Talent - Always be looking to surround yourself with people who are better than you to fill in the gaps. It’s not about the number of people you employ, it’s about employing the right people to help you grow.
3. Value - This is in terms of the proposition you are offering your clients. If you are doing what the people next door are doing, your business will not be sustainable because it’s not different and therefore, you will always struggle.
4. Customers - To grow your business, don’t become too involved in what is going on within your business, focus on what is happening on the outside. You must be constantly thinking about your customers and ask yourself, “Are we doing the right thing for our customers?”.
5. Investment - Invest in your business, that can be just pure hard work or financial. Think about whether other people will think your business is a worthwhile investment?
6. Stamina - When you are in business, business owners can run out of stamina quite quickly when they are not getting traction and therefore not growing. Ensure you have a strategy in place to help your business grow and keep going.

Susan discussed how most businesses focus on the bottom line - Increasing business and reducing costs, but she asked us to go beyond this and responsibly grow our company’s culture too. Susan offered us four points to think about:

1. Culture – “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” stated Susan and only a third of employees say that they are actively engaged at work, so she asked us, “what culture do you want to create?”.
2. Vision - You don’t impose your vision on to your employees, help your team shape your vision as team work is a great strategy advantage.
3. Establish your current reality – To keep pace with growth, understand where your company’s culture is now, where you want to be and always ensure you take time to go back and reflect.
4. Infrastructure - Ensure what you say and your behaviours align and match with your vision.

Giles advised if you are going to run a business and make a sale, you need to figure out who your customer is and who you are selling to in order to grow your business.

Giles offered us four pieces of advice drawing on his own experiences:

1. If you don’t have a clear proposition or problem you are going to solve, you are going to struggle.
2. If you want to grow a company you need a market that can sustain the growth you are after. Address your market size, if there are only 100 customers it’s not going to work.
3. You need a clear growth plan for what you want to achieve and how you are going to get there.
4. Massive action. If you want to make something big it’s hard work.

To conclude, “You have to have potential, talent and self-belief. How do you get self-belief? By doing.”

Facilitated by Dieter Hachenberg, John O’Sullivan, Founder of Ten2Two,  Susan Carroll, of Scala- Advance and Giles Palmer, CEO and Founder of Brandwatch were panelists.

Written by Lucy Charlotte Brand, Online Marketing Coach, Lady-digital.com.

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