Get Amplified
Get Amplified
The Customer Vortex: How to Make Growth Repeatable
In this conversation, we sit down with Jim Darragh, five-time exit leader and former CEO of Totalmobile, to unpack how simple differentiation, coachable teams, and predictable go-to-market motion drive repeatable growth.
Filled with humour, Jim shares how clarity was the through-line from his rugby start in IT distribution to leading a £100m SaaS transformation.
We unpack how alignment turns strategy into scale, tracking Jim’s path from hands-on sales to five exits, and Totalmobile's transformation. Clear differentiation, coachable teams, and a predictable go-to-market form a simple system that wins on purpose.
You’ll hear:
- How to create a “customer vortex” that pulls in the next buyer
- Why Predictability x Repeatability = Scalability
- How to hire for coachability, not just experience
- Why culture powers the engine
- And why simplicity matters
The conversation lands with three crisp takeaways:
- Define your differentiators and say no to everything else
- Assemble the right people and make them a real team
- Build operating rhythms that make growth forecastable
If you’re scaling a B2B tech company or sharpening your GTM focus, this one’s a field guide to clarity and growth.
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Welcome to Get Amplified, the podcast about the people that power the tech industry. Vicky, has winter kicked in for you yet? It's been sunny and warmish today here, but how are things in deepest, darkest Oxfordshire in the run-up to Christmas?
Vic:Oh God, don't talk about Christmas yet. I mean, I'm still in about April, I think.
Sam:Yeah.
Vic:Um, no, it's it's really sunny outside today, it's gorgeous. Good. Oh nice. Yes.
Sam:Excellent. Good to hear. So who have we got on today?
Vic:Well, as we're now in series seven, and you know, the podcast that we had last week with Darren Thayre from Google, it really struck me that we're covering alignment and alignment in terms of how do we get people pulling in the in the same direction as we scale an organization. And so when I was thinking about this, there is somebody that I know very well, and actually I've known him longer than anybody that we've been on the podcast before, and that is a guy by the name of Jim Darragh. And Jim and I have known each other since uni. So Jim rented a room off me.
Sam:Since last millennium.
Vic:Yes, yes. Yeah, it's making us feel a bit old, isn't it?
Jim:Let's not go into how long that is, how long ago that was.
Vic:Yeah, but since then, Jim has had the most incredible career. He's been a five times exit. He's the former CEO of Totalmobile, and Total mobile, Jim led the business through 500% revenue growth with an 800% EBITDA growth, which culminated in a very successful PE exit, which um you know most of us aspire to, quite frankly. So the fact that this growth has been sustainable and and knowing Jim well and the approach that he takes, Jim, I'm just so I'm we've been trying to get you on this podcast for so long. I'm so delighted that you've joined us.
Jim:I'm really glad you did, and I'm really glad you persisted. I I never said no.
Vic:No, you didn't.
Jim:What was gonna say, Jim?
Sam:What took you so long?
Jim:Just that being busy. Um people who do know me will know I'm kind of in perpetual motion. I don't really stop. Uh I rarely say no, uh and I like to be involved. So I'm I'm always up to something, doing something, running around. And actually, this was a perfect opportunity to sit down and and and catch up uh with Vicky and talk about this.
Sam:Well, perhaps you wouldn't mind starting by bringing our listeners up to speed with a little bit of a potted history of your career, if you don't mind.
Jim:Yeah, so I guess I studied something semi-relevant, which is not that normal. I studied uh management and economics at Leeds, and ultimately came out looking for a job, landed in IT accidentally. It was my mum used it as as many of us have done. Yeah, it was a rugby thing. I've got to be honest. I played a game, had a good game, got a tap on the shoulder in the bar afterwards by from a chap who said, What do you do? And I said, I've just finished uni. I'm kind of weighing up my options, uh, which was code for I don't have anything.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Jim:Um and uh he said, Well, do you want to come and have a chat with me? I own a company in London, we're an IT distributor. You know, maybe we might have something for you. The the gig was you come and play for our club, not the one you're at, and um and I'll get you a job, we'll sort you out. Yeah, I like it, and that's what happened, and that was my entrant into the world of IT. I think I stayed with him for five years, I learned an absolute bagload of stuff. He was the original entrepreneur.
Vic:Was it a disti that you started with?
Jim:It was, yeah.
Vic:Yeah, same with me.
Jim:Yeah, Osmosis. Um, which was a you know, family-owned IT hardware distributor, yeah. And it was the pointy end of selling. It really was. It was how many phone calls have you made, how many quotes have you got out the door, how many deals have you done, a whiteboard in the corner, bell it bell over the desk, you know.
Vic:And what did you start with selling? Because mine was um US Robotics 2088 modems.
Jim:Oh Christ. I mean, it was uh monitors, keyboards, mice, we would sell Logitech. I mean, literally any component that would go into uh one of a plethora of people building you know uh desktop computers at the time.
Sam:Yeah, in the in the day in the days when people built their own.
Jim:Yeah, exactly. Exactly that. Or there were people who would make 10 for the local, you know, local companies. Dell was probably just emerging, and you know, there wasn't uh Apple wasn't wasn't a name any of us were probably familiar with, you know. So it was it was like that, and you'd you'd get, you know, you'd it was uh hard the hard pointy end of telephone selling with a boss who would deploy such tactics as take the handset to our head if we didn't make enough phone calls and so on. You know, it was fun, right? But I learned tons and tons of stuff. Strangely, and I'm sure this will come back around. This guy in particular pretty much employed rugby players wall to wall. I mean, half half the club worked for this one guy, and we all sold, and his kind of background meaning, I think I asked him why. And he said, because rugby players are social creatures, uh, you operate in a team environment. Why wouldn't that make you and why wouldn't that make you half decent at selling as a start point? You know, I'll teach you the rest, but yeah, you know, you have probably got a better chance of succeeding because you're competitive and uh sociable, right? So we'll give it a go. Um, and Korea, I I did quite well. I enjoyed it. I put my hand up for more responsibility. Um ultimately um four or five years in, I was working with Microsoft as a as an OEM kind of arrangement. And I think actually the guy from Microsoft had suggested me to another company as somebody who could maybe help them set up in the UK. That was kind of the second job, and and it kind of you know got grew arms and legs a bit. Each job was a bit bigger for a slightly bigger company that you know, McAfee came along, that was an interesting opportunity. I'm sure we all have been right place, right time sometimes, right? It was a huge growth period in that in that IT and software marketplace anyway. But I think if you uh uh if you had you know basic levels of success and basic skills and so on, and you were willing to put yourself out there, opportunities were around, right? So you could go to the next step, the next step, the next step. Um and I was always there when when kind of you know, when when there was an opportunity, I think, you know, by the time I was gonna say 27, 28, I was running a hundred million pound business for McAfee in the UK. Wow. Um, and having fun, uh genuinely having fun doing it. Um, you know, I I think surrounding yourself with people of similar mindset, similar energy, you know, similar aspiration became a natural gravity. You attract these people and they attract you, and you become part of the same teams. And it was um, you know, we built some very strong teams, and you, you know, I had a pretty strong grounding in the fact that I think I always carried through from that very first sat on the sales floor with the whiteboard in the corner and all your numbers on it, that you know, we would we would have high levels of accountability and high levels of measurement, and you know, and we'd run the business on on those kind of numbers.
Sam:Interesting. Sounds very sort of, you know, not not I mean, and I guess we were around at in th those sort of period, but uh, you know, not dissimilar to my start at Softcat, I suppose. There's a phone, and go and find some customers. I guess you know, we were posh because we were selling Microsoft Office licenses instead of modems and monitors, but you know, it's the it's the same process. And that selling is is incredible grounding, I think, for a career-y business generally. You know, everyone needs to be able to stand up in front of a customer, I think.
Jim:It does quite, you know, it does uh sometimes look. I I don't spend hours thinking about this and worrying about it, but but the the grounding I we had, you know, learning skills and discipline, you know, self-discipline.
Sam:Yeah, discipline's probably a good thing.
Jim:Well, you know, the stuff that's gonna make you successful, you know, you could question, is it the same today? Again, you know, since COVID, the world is a lot more remote than it used to be. Uh, I grew up on that sales floor with tennis balls flying around and rugby balls whacking left, right, and centre, and you always had gets about you, but also you knew I'd better I better pull it out today because somebody's gonna put on the podium later on and say, How many calls have you made? And I don't I am not being the bottom of the tree here.
Sam:Yeah.
Jim:You know, does that same education or how does that education work now? I'm not sure. I'm not sure.
Sam:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't I don't know the answer to that, actually, not sort of being involved, but I think um it feels to me like a lot more of the prospecting is done through sort of LinkedIn stalking and so on, rather than phoning up and asking the receptive who's responsible for your IT procurement or something like that. Um yeah, which is swings of roundabouts, right? But like you know, having you're right, having that discipline and motivation to put the work in, and almost the effort being more important than the result, because you knew that well that if you put the effort in, you get the result eventually.
Jim:Yeah. Computer Associates and BMC software and in Spain and uh SAP, you know, as you can see, it just got a bit bigger each time. Um and then in 2010, uh a former boss called me whilst on holiday, didn't call me once, called me about seven times. Uh so I figured, oh my god, you know, something either something bad, or so I better call her back. Anyway, I called her back and said, Oh, I need to get I need to talk to you because um we're looking for a chief executive of a software business, and uh I'm chairing it, and I think you'd be really good at it. And um I think it was the maybe the itch I had to scratch. It was the it was a kind of verge of venture PE, kind of that size. So it didn't take much convincing, to be honest, that I'd like to that I would like to go and do something where I felt like the boss, uh not a divisional head of something else where somebody else made the calls. And so that and uh I thought I had probably had enough skills in the kit bag. Um and and I absolutely I jumped at it and went and did it, uh, and it worked quite well. Um there was one there was there was one like some moment which was a bit of a realization where I think I walked in and there was a CTO who was a really nice chap called David, and he looked at me and he said, uh, this was day one, I think. And he said, You're number eight. And I went, What do you mean I'm number eight? And he went, You're the eighth chief exec I've actually that that's that's cheering, isn't it? That was the question I should have asked, and I didn't ask, yeah. Um yeah, but I don't think that that was gonna phase anyone, and um look within actually a relatively short period of time, I think you know, less than a year, um, we'd had an offer for the business that was a pretty healthy offer from a US strategic buyer, and I think part of that was how we'd package the company to sell the product. We'd we'd kind of put a different wrap on it. Don't get me wrong, that company had a unique point of differentiation from the get-go. They just hadn't done very well at messaging it anyway. Yeah, um, that happened. I stuck around for a bit, um uh decided I wanted to go and do that again. Uh, and then there was a bit of a do it again, do it again, do it again. They weren't all they weren't all tons of fun, they weren't all as well baked as that first one. Um and they weren't all as quick to kind of convert into you know ultimate growth and value, uh the the thing all of your investors are always looking for. So Didak did a couple more, they were moderately uh successful, and then happened upon uh Total mobile in 2016 with an investor I knew already a bit, had met before. Um Belfast based, on-premise software, you know, no SaaS. It was it was buy it, buy it once, uh, you know, and pay us an annual maintenance fee.
Sam:Yeah.
Jim:Mostly selling into public sector. Had had a good product, had a proof point with with referenceable customers, all that kind of good stuff. So I could kind of go, right? Well, so what we're talking about is a scale up uh opportunity. So so how are we gonna, you know, what what do we need to build? Who do we need, how do we need to message it? How do we sell it to people? How do we scale the business? How do we bring the right people? Yeah, etc. etc. Right. So it was it was an engineering of a company. Tough first couple of years, I would think, especially because I took it to SAS and and the revenue kind of, you know. Yeah, the usual did the did the toilet you bend on me, uh, which which was predicted. Um we were out of it within 18 months because we had some fairly good growth, began to scale up, added a couple of pieces of MA in that first round, added some great, fantastically good people uh to help run it. Yeah, and in 2020 we sold it again, you know. Uh I stayed on, it scaled up more acquisitions. We did seven or eight in the end. All tech, we had a strategy. No, but there was, and me and Vicky talked about this the other day when we caught up, and there was a point, the lights on moment in I don't know if it was 19 or 20. I don't know if it was pre-acquisition or post, where we um where I listened to a podcast, somebody put me onto a podcast uh called uh making strategy simple or simplifying strategy, something like that.
Vic:Um was that the Patrick Lencioni one?
Jim:Yeah. Um and he and you know, it's a 30-minute podcast. Do go and find it if you if you're that way inclined. But it there was one there's one line in it where it says, Um, you know, I can condense strategy to the things you consciously do to differentiate yourself in the in the face of the competition. It's something along those lines, and they bought some airlines and so on. But the I think that that phrase played over and over again in my brain, and how it needed to be simple, and it needed to be everyone in the organization needed to get it, but not just get it. Not not uh, I was talking to an organization yesterday and said it's not about having a statement on a wall somewhere and people walk past it, it's not it's not at all about that, it's not at all about a PowerPoint presentation, it is about that every day people walk into the building and they think, I've got to do that today. My job is to reinforce that thing or those things.
Vic:I think that's where the alignment piece comes in.
Jim:Yeah, yeah. Um, and we we did a bit of analysis of where we'd won and where we'd won, where we probably shouldn't have won, uh, and where we lost. Uh and and almost retro-engineered, okay. So so what is it? Well, what yeah, well, it's these verticals, and when we do these things in these verticals, we get to beat people much bigger than ourselves. And it's it's technology and a technology story, a solution story that looks like this. It it it you know, it takes people on a journey and it it lasts, it's not it's not you buy one thing and we'll see you later. You know, there's you we take people on the on a journey of maturity where they can continue to reap benefit. And then there was an element about and and how and how do we communicate with customers and how do we um how do the actually how do our customers judge us and judge our competitors when you know it could be that beauty parade, right? We could be first in and then we come out and they go in and they come out and somebody else goes in. But actually, what we want to be is that our engagement and our level of knowledge, expertise, proof, whatever we want to call it, everyone else gets judged by us. And that would be a really cool thing. So and it became those three things um around you know, how do we always, you know, when when we go to bat in cricket, when we go to bat in this vertical market, you know, we we hit the ball a lot, right? Um and you know, when when our customers buy in with us, they're not buying uh you know one solution, they're buying two solutions, three solutions, five solutions, they're buying, and and they're actually buying in over a period of time, so they can see a journey for themselves and they can see uh a continual advancement. Anyway, look, this became the thing I was boringly religious about it. I mean, yeah, I would I would use it as the front slide of every town hall meeting we ever did. Um and I would and I would unashamedly say, I know you've seen this before, I know you see it every time I show up, and I want you to know how important it is because you can all if you can all not just understand this and not just recite this, but if you can all do this, we become unbeatable.
Vic:So, Jim, um Patrick Lencioni, so he he talks about the CRO role. I know you were CEO, but he he he says the CRO's role is chief reminding officer.
Jim:I like that. I'd never heard that. Yeah. And we had um, and you you know, I was fortunate to enough to look to work with some really talented salespeople and really talented sales leaders, and and they were difference makers in their own right, don't get me wrong, you know, and they were and have been and continue to be, you know, very process rich. You know, they um impart knowledge and skills and learning, um, but on a absolutely repeatable basis, you know, you know, so um I think you know it somebody asked me after that first exit in whatever it was, 2011, a company called Zeus in Cambridge, what did you do to make it to achieve that level of success quite quickly? And I said, What do you mean? What did I do? Are you looking for me to say I did one thing? Because I didn't do one, yeah. I did a hundred things ten times a day, you know.
Sam:Yeah, um it is it is if only it was as simple as one magic thing.
Jim:Wouldn't that be good? Because we could IP that and sell it to everyone, but no, I mean it's the combination of yeah, a strategy, uh people, people who execute, energy, you know, just uh loads of different things that brought to bear and yet still made it really hard.
Sam:So that's your formula, isn't it? Really? You know, you said it's the you know, there's no there's no magic bullet, but you do kind of have have a strategy, people execution formula.
Jim:I um over time I've moved into a place where um grey hair and experience suggests that the bigger things that can go wrong there's probably three, right? Um you don't have a strategy, you don't understand your point of differentiation, you can't describe it, therefore you don't live by it, and you fight far too many battles, you might lose.
Vic:Um that's a really, really good point. You said it very quickly there, but it's a really and that's the strategic anchor, isn't it? Of this is this is the game we're playing, not those ones, this one.
Jim:What is it? What are you doing, and what do you do on a repeatable basis that allows you to win, right? Yeah, and if you don't know that, then you know there's every possibility you're you're just I used to call it um I've got a I've got a I'm terrible, but I've got a stupid dog, right? We've all got a stupid dog, which I love her to bits, but she's a boxer and the brain cells are are you know the two of them rub together, right? But if you lose in a field, she'll chase the next thing that moves, right? And that's what you do if you don't have a strategy, you're just the next thing that moves. She's never caught one in the entire time I've had her, right? So she'll just knacker herself out running around a field, right? Which is brilliant for me because I can just stand and watch it, but you can't analogy. Yeah, imagine what it looks like in a company concept.
Vic:The next thing that we should yeah, I see it all the time without knowing now.
Jim:There's there's another thing here which I love to talk about, which is predictability times repeatability equals scalability, right?
Vic:Just repeat that, please.
Jim:Predictability, you know. Yeah, you predict, and I'm really talking funnel if I for my own.
Vic:Predictability, repeatability equals scale, is that right?
Jim:No, predictability and repeatability equals scalability, right?
Vic:That's what I just said. Don't say no.
Jim:Oh, sorry. So if I can predict how many leads how many leads I need to get a deal, that's great. If I can predict that, I can repeat it. Yeah, if I can repeat it, I can scale the business, right? Yeah, it's very hard to get that data, that information, that understanding. You know, how much sausage meat do I need to make a sausage roll? How many leads? Where are they gonna go in the funnel? What are the stages I'm gonna step through? How do I improve them, etc. Right? So I think that's really important. But if you don't have that definition of differentiation at the top, yeah, and I'm gonna tell you the number of chief execs I sit down with and say, can you just, you know, before we start, grab your coffee, just tell me about differentiation in a company. You know, the who, what, why, where, and when. Just tell me how it works. And it's incredible how many of them will then gas away for 20, 30 minutes without actually saying anything because they're trying to cover up the fact there's not an answer to that question today.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Jim:It's fine, let's work it out. Yeah.
Vic:I don't want to do that test with you.
Jim:The next is um so that's strategy, and then the other two points I think that Pete that can slow organizations down are do you have the right people?
Vic:I would add to that, do you have the right people working together?
Jim:You could do, absolutely. And that and I guess that's part of it. Do you have the right people and are they a good team? Do they understand how they work together? And the and the last one is is you know, functionally probably something that is just you know, front of mind for me. Is do you have the right go to market? Do you know how to execute it?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Jim:Now, if you have a decent strategy, the right people, and a good go to market, I think you're probably backable. Yeah. Yeah. There's a product in here somewhere, right? But yeah, yeah, yeah.
Sam:You've got to have reasonable market fit.
Jim:Yeah. I don't see many companies. Maybe and maybe that's the stage of company I I get to talk to, but I don't see many companies who don't already have a pretty decent product, right? That the people have bought and yeah, but it doesn't count for everything.
Vic:This is, you know, we did a podcast with the Chasm group with Paul Weefels from the Chasm Group. He basically said there's so many brilliant products out there now, but that's not what wins anymore. It's how you execute. It's how you go to market, it's how you reach your customers. Because you can all think of how many organizations that had absolutely incredible tech that are no longer here. Yeah.
Jim:Yeah. And then, you know, uh personally, um, either formally or informally, I've and I've I've done both, you know, we basically go through a bit of a diagnostic of the strategy, you know, the people side, which we sometimes called organizational maturity, and the the go-to-market, right? The go-to-market maturity, and and ask about what how are you doing this, and and go through the whole bit of you know, who are you selling to, what's your ideal customer profile, how do you get to them, you know, what's the sales methodology, what's the sales mechanism, where do you find your salespeople, do you use partners? Yeah, there's a whole, you know, and then you're into you know a hundred questions to just try and work out where are you on the map, right? Uh before kind of really diving in and starting to talk about what what would be right for you.
Sam:Interesting stuff. You know, that scalability predictability thing. I think we we did something not dissimilar at SoftCat, I guess. Yeah, another SoftCat parallel. Um we would really predicate the business on the number of salespeople, account managers that we had, and their tenure. So we you know we knew that if we could get a salesperson to five years in, they'd do I don't I don't remember the actual numbers, but let's say they you know five years in, they'd do half a million pounds of gross profit every year on average, pretty repeatably and predictably. So we knew we needed to hire ex salespeople this year as as grads, as new starters, because we knew in five years' time we would keep Y of them, and then they would generate Y times. So, you know, we clearly we did forecasting within sales teams and so on. But in terms of predicating where the business would be in ABC years, it was based on how many people we could hire and how how many people we could retain and get through to the point where they were they were effectively productive. And we, you know, we knew those metrics, and you know that was that was one of the cornerstones. When we went to the the city for our IPO, that was one of the cornerstones. We have a very predictable business. If we can keep hiring people at this rate, our business will be at this sort of size in this sort of time frame.
Jim:That's uh that is absolutely a pure example of the predictability to scalability kind of piece, right? And there's loads of others, right? There's there's yes, the ability to create an amount of pipeline, there's the ability to teach somebody a not a rigid but a formulaic process, right? That makes them predictable because you know if you get a customer to this stage and if you've been through the all the steps that come up to that stage, the conversion at that point's going to look like this, and it always just does, right?
Sam:Yeah, so if you make if you make a hundred cold calls a day, you'll get five quotes out. Chances are you'll win one of those five quotes, and so on.
Jim:There's all those famous sales movies that attest to this, right? Glenn Gary and the Boiler Room, and all of those all have those snippets of you know, it's it's a numbers game. Um, yeah. That bit. Doesn't change.
Vic:Maybe the bit, you know, maybe the how you get the numbers is is different, I think, with what we were talking about with LinkedIn, etc. But I still think it is still a numbers game.
Sam:The basic premise of activity in, output out is must still remain.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Jim:Um, but understanding the dynamics in that value chain. So the other one I love to talk about is and this is especially relevant to that kind of early, uh, early go to market, uh early, maybe a new vertical, you know, whatever it may be, is something I talk to the to people about is the customer vortex, which is um if you can start a vortex spinning, right, with a point of a customer, and that customer is within a target group for you, and you understand why they're in a target group, and you understand why that customer would buy your technology to differentiation feeds in here, and you can start it spinning, then actually you begin to suck other customers in. And at some point it creates a momentum of its own. Yeah. At that point, you're just getting the customer anyway, right? Because everyone knows I go to them because they service my marketplace better than other people, and they know my world and they use my language, etc. etc. etc.
Sam:Yeah. I guess you could call it the nobody ever got fired for buying IBM or Microsoft or you know, whoever the but I bet SoftCat had those constituent groups, right?
Jim:Um total, you know. Yeah, yeah. I haven't thought of it like that, but yeah. We had a right to win at some point, right?
Vic:I love that right to win. It's like you're setting the bar.
Jim:Everyone else is judged by you.
Vic:Yeah, that's a wonderful way to put yourself, isn't it?
Sam:Yeah.
Vic:High expectations.
Sam:In cricket parlance, we'd say, Oh, it's you know, it's our game to lose. Right. Which unfortunately, in the when I play cricket, we're never in that situation, but uh but hey. So talk to me about people, you know. We're obviously Amplified Group very much about people and teamwork and all that sort of shenanigans. How do you locate the right people? How do you how do you coach them to the point where you need them to be? That's clearly yeah, it's one pillar of your strategy, but people has got to be right out there in terms of importance, right?
Jim:Um there's yeah, it it's I mean the teams, the teams that that I've worked in, um had the fortune, you know, fortune to work in, have all have always been really the deciding factor.
Sam:Yeah.
Jim:Um yes, you know, you know, have a good strategy, make sure everyone's on the same page. Um and there's all those adages, right? I've always believed don't be the smartest person in the room. That's absolutely case, especially if you may, you know. Um I've always I've always um tried to introduce a level of of fun and humor into it. It's it's it's hard work, especially working in the world of um you know, investment and private equity and venture. It's hard work. You know, there's there's um don't get me wrong, there's there's there's there's wonderful outcomes and rewards, and it's hugely rewarding, but it needs to be fun though, doesn't it, Jim?
Vic:It really, really does need to be fun.
Jim:You're at it for too long, too many hours a day.
Vic:Yeah, yeah.
Jim:Um, there will be points of stress, they will there will be the odd shouty moment, there'll be disagreements. But if if you if the thing you remember the most is the times you loved and had fun, yeah, and uh introduce that into a room. I was again working with the team yesterday. I'm not not really involved with the team, but uh they made the day very easy because they were quite good fun.
Vic:Yeah, it does, it counts so much. It's not just that, it's it's the whole team spirit piece. We've you know, we do team speed checks. We had one this week, and it was for a public sector team in Dyna Chase in Australia, and one we have a section of free form comments, and one of the comments was I have never enjoyed work as much as I am doing now.
Jim:How amazing is that and and that's and you do want people because that drives another level of energy, another level of commitment, another level of engagement, desire to win, whatever it may be, right? So so I think that's huge.
Vic:It's the positive energy, isn't it? It's that force forwards versus what we have seen, you know, is the crack the whip you will do, which is no fun.
Sam:You might not even fun, probably for those who are cracking the whip.
Jim:No, I used to again because I love a an image, and this my team used to hate this image. I said it was like one of those um 1950s Kirk Douglas Viking movies, you know, where he's and I said, So imagine me and a loincloth, you know, drum.
Vic:No, thank you.
Jim:Yeah, this is the can we edit that out, Victoria. But me banging a drum, I said, just how fast can I bang this drum before you're all out of sync? Right? That's not gonna work, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Jim:So you know, I might get 10% by banging it a bit faster and you row a bit harder, but ultimately, you know, it's all gonna fall over, right? So that's that's not the thing. That's not the rhythm we create here. The rhythm we create is we're going over there, right? The destination is very clear. Now let's all do our best and let's all row at the best of our ability and let's help each other get there, right? And and by the way, um, feel free to tell jokes while we're doing it, right? So you know, there's a different way than than a very formulaic drum banging. Um so that so that humor bit, uh look, I clearly you look for kind of you know environmental things, right? Like, you know, has this person achieved in their career? You know, what have they, how do they describe that? How did they do it? You know, so you're looking for okay, proof points and experience and so on. But above that, um, character, coachability, uh, people who who have um achieved great things. You know, I love people who have a backstory, who've climbed a mountain, who've run a marathon, who've you know uh competed. We you know, we had guys, we had a guy who was a world age group champion at triathlon and stuff like that. I love those kind of stories of people who excel through effort, right? Because that generally will breathe into your work. Well will, you know, that kind of same level of commitment of uh commitment to excellence and commitment to personal sacrifice to achieve something generally will bleed into their workplace, right? Yeah and they're out of the workplace. So there are all these kind of clues, um, as well as you know, you know, the ability to operate in a team environment and be a positive source of energy for others. Um we don't want any mood hoovers and and people who just emotional vampires, right? I never wanted any politics. Yeah, um, I tried to breathe um refreshing reality.
Vic:Um how do you do that with that? How and and just to explain uh no politics.
Jim:How how do you make that well often pain painful truth?
Vic:Yeah, it is, isn't it? That's exactly it.
Jim:It's telling the truth. That let's not hide anything.
Vic:Yeah.
Jim:Uh let's say it as it is. Transparency if it's a bit SH1T, I'm gonna probably I'm probably gonna blurt that out, right? Yeah, and go, oh, I don't like that, it's a bit rubbish. Um be prepared for it. It's not personal, and I'm prepared to talk about it. I'm not just gonna throw that away.
Vic:Hide away from it.
Jim:You know, uh shared problem, shared solution kind of thing.
Vic:So I would define that as trust, Jim, as well. Yeah. Because if you haven't got trust, you can't have a shared problem. People don't ask for help. All of that is the undercurrent there.
Jim:But it does start with let's not be afraid to call it as it is, right?
Vic:If we try to really from the top doing that.
Jim:Um people, you know, almost to the point of comedy, right? I mean, that that people people knew it was coming, right? Not in a bad way, not in a scary way. But people knew, oh, that's you know, we're not gonna get one, but we're we're gonna we're gonna have a kind of interesting meeting here where we're gonna talk about the fact that something's just not working. Yeah, but in it never became uh a weapon to hit people.
Vic:That's the trick.
Jim:Um, yeah. Uh and I'd be the first to admit, you know, as again, if if I would go in and kind of go, I think I've buggered this up, you know.
Vic:So you'll admit that. See, that's leading from the top, and that's providing that psychological safety, then because if it's all right for you to do that, you're setting the example. I think authentic leaders you create the environment for others to grow.
Sam:The nice vulnerability, isn't it?
Vic:It is vulnerability, yeah. It is.
Sam:I'm still involved with people respond to that, warm to that.
Jim:The the nicest thing, Vicky, they did for me. Um, and they did a lot of nice things. I've got a lot of, you know, I'm still involved with the company, I'm still on the board. Um, you know, all an awful lot of people I would have transcended work and become kind of friends, mates, you know. Uh and and I'm I'm you know, I love the fact that they still pick up the phone and say, can I can you can I can I get some advice? You know, that's great. I love that. But the best thing they did, um, you know, I'd kind of hit my own limits after I think eight years running the business. I I think I think honestly it probably began to outscale me, and and there was a realization. There was a realization on a number of levels, right? I'm knackered, not sure I could keep doing it, not sure I have the ideas I used to. Love the place, gonna be very hard, but maybe maybe it's time for another set of eyes.
Vic:Yeah.
Jim:Um, that was a hard realization. But the thing they did when I left, um, and I occasionally watch this on the slide to myself. They record the the whole company, or as many, I don't know, pick a number, hundred of them recorded, describe Jim in one word. And there were some quite funny ones. Yeah, I guess quite happy to see that.
Sam:Any any words made up of only four letters?
Jim:Uh no, thankfully, they must have edited those out.
Vic:Uh what was the most common word?
Jim:Um maybe relentless or something, or or there was a there was a there was probably um uh there was a bit of a courageous kind of thing. Um yeah, I did probably know relentless is uh is probably a bit right. There was uh inspirational, which is like which is nice, but yeah, punchy punchy that one. Um you know, I know there were silly ones, right? In fact, silly was someone that somebody called me. Uh silly, yeah, which I actually wear as a bit of a badge of honour because yeah, I think I'm afraid that that's probably my word for you. If the boss can still be silly, that's good. Yeah, I'd be loud on the floor and people would know I was there, and I'd ask how everyone was and go round and stuff. But look, um, it was it was a thing that I'm it was a uh it was clearly quite heartfelt, and it kind of yes, it did reduce me to a dribbling mess, but it meant an awful lot that an awful lot of people had jobs and careers and enjoyed what they were doing and understood what we were about and excelled and progressed and all that kind of stuff. But at the end of the day, it was down to the fact that they were the right people doing the right things, and uh we just gave them a framework to go and do, and and like you say, hopefully they did it with a smile and there was a level of fun and engagement, and and that that process um will stay with me in terms of uh I always I was this always comes out wrong, this next thing I'm about to say, which is um uh I was never a I was never a good kid's coach, right? My both lads played rugby, and and because I'd played invariably someone went, well, you can coach them. I went, I'm gonna be terrible. I am literally gonna be the world's worst coach, right? I'm just not cut out for this, and I wasn't. I was a hundred percent right. I was far too kind of into it. I enjoyed winning far too much for the for an under-sevens team, yeah. So, etc. etc. Right. I was the archetypal rubbish coach. Um, and so I I just said, look, there's so many better people I'm just not cut out for this, and probably so many better things that you could do for the club than goes 7, probably. Probably, and and I think ultimately that's what they got me doing, you know, getting sponsors. But um, I do I do enjoy that component of winning, you know, it is in my DNA. I can't help it. Um, I always used to say to the to the teams at work, you know, we will have so much fun when we're winning. You know, it's not the only thing in the world, but God, it is a hell of a axle grease on our wheels, that will be um so I had that perfect storm of you have to make you have to you have to start the winning though, don't you? You do, but I had that perfect kind of period of winning, growing, uh surrounded by great people who are whose company I enjoyed, having fun, um building value, nobody trying to kind of you know, board meetings became relatively easy, etc. etc. You know, that was uh that was a purple patch, and um one now as a you know, in the uh twilight years of my career of working as a non-exec and chair with different people is you know trying to impart a bit of how do you get there? How do you how do you get to that point where do you know why? In I must have played 300 games of rugby, I reckon, at all different ages and all different places and all different levels. Um and I only played one perfect game in all of them. Where everything I did worked. And it was a school game when I was about 15. No, I was a bit older, I was probably 16. And everything I did worked, and I remember it to this day, and I remember my dad was watching, and I remember what he said afterwards. When every tackle I knocked the ball out of their hands, I scored two or three tries. Every time I got the ball, I ran 20 meters and knocked somebody over. You know, everything I did that day just happened, and I will never forget the feeling of bliss from the perfect game. And I think, you know, when I stopped playing rugby relatively young, relatively prematurely, um I think I went looking for that point of perfect bliss at work where everything you do is working and everyone around you is in symphony, and you've got all the right people, um, and they're all doing the right things. And I think you know periods of career have not been far off there. Have not been far off that. And it is interesting to understand what the perfect why, yeah, and why that why that happens. Yeah.
Vic:Which probably leads us quite nicely into the three takeaway question, doesn't it, Sam?
Sam:Yeah, probably about that sort of time, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's good. I mean, maybe the three takeaways are strategy, people, and execution, but I'm sure you could summarize it better for us, Jim, if you don't mind.
Jim:You're not you're not a million miles off, right? Strategy points of differentiation, know it, be clear about it, get everyone around you to organize that way and do that work. Um get the right people, people who are coachable and uh, you know, experienced and do the right things, um with the right backgrounds, then and they'll fit your business. And then that whole I think the third one will probably be that predictable, repeatable. You know, you want to be scalable, understand, and it and it can apply to your go-to-market, your people, it can apply to so many different things, as Sam said, but work out how to be predictable and work out how to be repeatable, build around that, and make sure everyone knows how to execute it, you have the systems, people, and places to make it happen. Life becomes simpler.
Vic:And what is the communication of it as well, is that and and you saying about being uh literally reminding everyone every time that you're in front of them that this is this is what we're doing, we're not changing it, this is where we're going. The the number of execs that we work with that every quarter it's different, and people there's so much noise, so much distraction they just don't know what to prioritize.
Jim:The simple, repeatable, you know, that everyone can get behind, everyone can align to, everyone can work to support is so powerful.
Vic:Yeah, yeah. Yeah, simplicity wins in our book, at least part of our formula, isn't it?
Sam:It's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Vic:Very few teams can do it. So our formula of purpose, trust, clarity, and simplicity, that for me that relates to your so the purpose really relates to the strategy bit. The trust piece is 100% the people piece, and then the clarity and simplicity is is the execution. But what we see is um our speed checks are very predictable in their scores, usually. The highest, uh uh irrespective if you get a low score overall, the highest score is always purpose. The lowest score is always simplicity, and then the interesting ones in the middle, the trust and the clarity. If you've got high clarity and low trust, so you've got high clarity and low trust, that means that people know what to do, but they're being told what to do and they're not bought into it.
Jim:So you've got a bully, a dictatorship, a dictatorship, yeah.
Vic:And then you've got high trust, but lack of clarity, you need these people asking for clarity to get that because to your point, they haven't got a clue where they're going, they've got too many priorities, they don't know how to prioritize, how to get stuff done. And and particularly that has been exacerbated in this remote world that we're working in, this hybrid world that we've just done a put um, our newsletter's just gone out. It's called squirreling and spiralling. So you're working on your own, you're squirreling away, you think you're doing the best thing you can in the job you're in, but nobody else knows about it, or you're spiralling because you're stressing about something because no one's talked about it.
Jim:I think there are ways to make remote organizations work, but it is definitely a harder thing to get right.
Vic:Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. It's making us very busy there, I can tell you. Indeed.
Sam:Yeah. So before we before we wrap up, have you got a book that you can recommend for our listeners?
Jim:Um I've got a very predictable book, I'll show you a second. I'll show you the first one that's is the current book.
Sam:Is it is it by Clive Woodward?
Jim:No, it's not. No, wouldn't read a rugby book. The first one is is current, um, and it's called uh the go to market hand handbook for B2B SaaS leaders. It's pretty practical. Um uh it's a very practical and useful read. Um does exactly what it's about.
Vic:Where's that by Jim?
Jim:Actually, somebody I know who works in a PE, who works who is the I think the principal of a PE company called Notion, is a guy called Chris Topman. Um T O T O T M A N, uh is a very smart guy, was an operator before he became a poacher. Um before he became a PE guy. And then and then predictably, and this one is has literally got pages falling out of it, um, and it would appear things like well read in it as well. Um, is uh execution, the art of getting things done.
Vic:Right, Jack Welch.
Jim:Rather predictably, you know, but still, yeah, yeah. Uh a pretty a pretty useful read. It's got a Jack Welch kind of backing. They're all G Eyes. But it's um it's a it's a well well turned book that we've not had that as a recommendation either before.
Vic:Yeah, super helpful. Thank you. Cheers, yeah.
Jim:A an oldie but a goodie.
Vic:Yeah, hasn't aged.
Jim:Oh it's good.
Vic:Yeah, excellent. Thank you.
Sam:Yeah, brilliant. Well, Fab, thanks, Jim.
Jim:Well, I think we've uh covered a huge amount of ground there. Hopefully I didn't gas uh or boringly uh or too much.
Vic:No more than usual.
Jim:No more than usual. Oh hard.
Sam:So it just remains to for me to say thanks for listening to get Amplified from the Amplified Group. Your comments and your subscriptions are always gratefully received.