Coaching

Six years ago, Trevor Palmer founded his PR agency, Tank PR. Since then, the company has grown to a team of almost 20 people, with a complete service offering including SEO and social media alongside the public relations work. Tank now boasts one of the most enviable client lists in the Midlands, including national and international companies.

Working with Stuart and High Growth has really helped us to measure the right things, predict growth and know where to focus. Stuart also advised we think about what to throw away in order to maintain the vision we want, something which I had never really considered before working with High Growth.

Thanks to High Growth, our approach to business has changed massively. We are now far more focused and confident, which has helped us to define ourselves in the PR world and, more importantly of course, the self-belief to truly impress our current and potential clients.

While working with High Growth we have seen 30 per cent growth year on year, almost 100 per cent staff retention and a far above industry average for retaining clients. We were so impressed with Stuart’s input that we brought him on to the Tank board as a non-executive director.

Established over a decade ago, Nottingham-based brand consultancy Tribe quickly became the ‘go-to’ agency in the East Midlands.

As a high growth business, the consultancy wanted to move to the next level and expand its reach both nationally and internationally. To do this, Tribe turned to High Growth and its founder Stuart Ross for coaching and strategic advice. Here, Andrew Cartwright, founder of Tribe, explains how working with High Growth helped him and his business to change its mindset and excel.

We started working with Stuart Ross around three years ago. Since then our entire approach has fundamentally changed. We have transformed the way we define our agency – by moving from a transactional operation, responding brief by brief, to a more consultative-based approach. This has resulted in us being able to acquire larger projects and attract larger fees, as well as becoming a non-pitch agency.

Reaching a level where we no longer need to pitch was a significant goal for us – and not just because we believe the pitching culture is a real problem within the creative industry – but because it proved we had become a ‘go-to’ agency.

Having read Ross’ best-selling eBook, Secrets of High Growth Companies, David Lancashire, CEO of projekt202, approached Ross for advice on how to prepare his leadership team for the next phase of growth.

“We began leveraging the framework outlined in Secrets of High Growth Companies, clarifying our purpose, values, main goal, differentiation, business model, and key initiatives, so that it was easy to communicate to everyone in the company,” said Lancashire. “Stuart’s tips for preparing for those workshops were incredibly insightful.”

“High Growth is achievable at any time, as long as there is disciplined focus on improving management practices,” said Ross. “projekt202 had begun to position themselves as the world leader in an emerging area called experience-driven application development. It was absolutely vital that the company begin to align the mindset of the entire team.”

“At the end of that project, we asked the High Growth Academy to profile members of the management team so that we could evaluate strengths and weaknesses, and ensure that people’s natural gifts were being applied in the right areas of the company,” said Lancashire.

Having established Sylmar Technology as one of the leading suppliers of high quality solid surface products to both domestic and commercial markets in the UK over 25 years, the board might have been forgiven for believing that the business was performing near to its full potential.

From its 26,000 sq ft. factory at Alfreton, Derbyshire, Sylmar Technology was successfully fabricating worktop collections for kitchen and bathroom applications up and down the country. The firm was capturing a sizeable share of the market, but with ambitions to grow even further, a contact at a partner organisation recommended the services of renowned business coach Stuart Ross.

Here, Peter J R Holt, managing director at Sylmar Technology, explains how Stuart Ross, founder of High Growth, reviewed the manufacturer’s practices before recommending a business development strategy that has secured a 25% increase in year on year sales.

Back in 2013, the management team and staff possessed a lack of understanding regarding the strategic direction of the business, a resistance to change and a feeling that we were not able to step up to the challenge presented by growth.