Defining Moments

I went to school in the North East before going on to do a Maths degree in Manchester. My first job was working for a small market research agency and my boss was a young female entrepreneur. During that time I really got to learn the ropes and the… read more

Lifestyle Story

One of the great things about owning my own business is that when I want to do things during the day with my daughter Annabel, I never have to ask anyone if I can leave the office. On the negative side though, it does impact hugely on the amount of… read more

Mistake To Avoid

There’s definitely been lots of mistakes along the way. The thing that I’m not very good at is delivering bad news, so I’ll kind of go along with things too long, just because I don’t want to let people down. Sometimes we’ve committed to things that we… read more

Mistake To Avoid

At the moment, we get a good idea and just make it happen. Some have sold better than others, and it’s all about doing a lot more homework about potential demand for each product before we go ahead with it.… read more

Secret

Quite often we’ll make a plan for the year and we’ll change it within three months. That can frustrate a lot of people around you, but you’ve got to surround yourself with people who are flexible and don’t mind the plan changing on a regular basis.… read more

Secret

It’s important to research how you can be different in the marketplace that you’re going into, and what value you can add. The right idea, the right mentality, and a grasp on the numbers are the three key areas I would say.… read more

How I... Guide

At first, like most agencies, we expected to have a number of key accounts that would deliver so much revenue each year, which we’d grow over the years by hopefully gaining more and more client accounts and fulfilling their individual needs. Last year,… read more

How I... Guide

Twice a year the whole company goes off site for a few days with the aim of building relationships and to explain more about the strategy of the company and where we’re heading. It’s an opportunity for our staff to have their input as well, no matter… read more

How I... Guide

I’ve never taken all the money out of the business each year, I’ve always left a chunk in which has allowed us to build up a certain amount of profit. When we try new product developments, we’ve got the funding to do it with our own money. We’ve never… read more

Pearl Of Wisdom

Because we’re a young, predominantly female company, we can let that be a barrier, or we can say, yes, we are different to what you’re normally used to dealing with, but we have a fresh approach, and this is about the future. That’s the way we’ve gone… read more

Challenge

We’ve grown by an average of 45% per year, but that does present challenges in terms of maintaining quality. This is my first business, and I’m new to this in a way, but I’ve learned along the road about how to manage and help people. We’re a very young… read more

Success

In the beginning, 90% of our clients were in London and we had a couple locally. Now, a third of our business is in the US, nearly two thirds in London and the rest are local. We’ve just got our first Italian law firm so its developing all the time, but… read more

Success

Because we don’t have lots and lots of sales, we tend normally to have bigger value sums come in. When they’ve reached the six figure mark, everyone runs around the office screaming and being generally ridiculous- there’s a fantastic camaraderie amongst… read more

Support Story

I’ve had a lot of luck in terms of having coaches and mentors. I still keep in touch with the Financial Director of Sage and he gives me advice on certain aspects of running a business, and people with depths of business experience have helped me to… read more