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. This was something we always strived for, to be recognised nationally as the sought after agency outside London.
This change was achieved in a number of ways. Firstly, Stuart worked closely with the senior team to help develop and refine our mindset and improve the confidence we had in ourselves and the work we were producing. We were already on track to achieve the objectives we set, but Stuart challenged us to set bigger goals, ambitions that were never unrealistic but will see us quickly become the most wanted creative agency in the East Midlands. We are certainly getting there, and fast.
Stuart also encouraged us to be more open, advice that we feel really helped produce our best work. We now invite potential clients to see our offices and what we do first hand, so we can share our work and culture with them. Stuart also helped us to develop our idea of ‘Bite-Size Tribe’, a concept that sees our designers join the client for several days. This is an invaluable experience that ensures we are completely in sync with our clients.
Stuart’s coaching was useful to us because he was never afraid to challenge our ideas. Not one person is smart enough alone, and Stuart’s knowledge and experience provides the perfect sounding board for us to develop and refine our ideas.
Stuart never sits on the fence and helps us to rationalise split decisions, suggesting an avenue to execute ideas that fits Tribe. He is very much like a sat nav for growing businesses, we are the ones in control of our destination but Stuart’s advice and guidance ensure we get there.
Together we created one, three and five year plans, giving us short-term goals but also overall aims to underpin our vision. The results we’ve seen over the last three years have been very encouraging – and we’re excited for the future. We are well on track to achieve the targets in our five-year plan. With Stuart’s advice, we have grown our client base by 28 per cent.
I would highly recommend High Growth, and particularly Stuart Ross. His advice is invaluable, and his impressive insight and experience in almost every industry you can imagine, is an asset to any business looking to expand.
