Our business journey so far has been a really strange one…

The first couple of years (most of this time when the business was my laptop and I) was all about Survival.

I’d heard all the statistics about how so many new businesses fail and I’d promised Cassie and Charlotte that I’d actually make this jump from a relatively secure corporate life to the life of a small business owner work.

Also, whilst I felt I was a pretty good adviser what I didn’t realise is that I had so much to learn about building and growing a business (to be perfectly frank I’m still learning…every single day!)

Next for a few years came the desire to be a business which was sustainable.

I’d managed to climb over the first hump of making the business work…the next job was to make sure we could survive for the long term. This was about working hard building a decent team of people who support us to deliver a great service to our clients and putting in place the right systems and processes to ensure we were doing things as best as we could every single time.

In the last couple of years it’s been about being significant…

Now as you read this your definition of ‘significance’ might be different to how I see it…

Of course it’s about continuing to grow as a business with a team which I’m incredibly proud to be a part of…

Of course it’s about continuing to train, nurture and support young people into a profession which adds a significant amount of value into peoples lives…

However it’s about something more than that…

For me achieving significance as a business is being able to truly say we have a core set of values and behave as you’d expect related to these values…

…and one of these values I’m most proud in our business is the fact that we’re all about ‘doing well and doing good’

That’s been translated into a number of actions this year…

From encouraging more people in Havering to read by supporting the local literary festival, to sponsoring a local Children’s football team all the way through to supporting a classroom of kids through a financial education program….we’re firmly committed to making sure that we share some of the luck we’ve had as a business with people who need our help…sometimes that’s a commitment of money, sometimes it’s a commitment of time and sometimes it’s a commitment of expertise…

….however I remain a firm believer in the fact that if you’ve been lucky enough to be supported by some great people when building your business the least you can do is try to support others.

You see significance to me isn’t only about money….it’s about how you use whatever you’ve got to help others…and as an individual and as a business we’ll going to carry on doing this for years to come.