An introduction to our Managing Director



An introduction to our Managing Director

As always thank you for taking the time to read this brief article, it has been a little while since I last put together a blog / article and a lot of changes have gone on in that time one of note I have recently moved into the position of Managing Director and I’ve been thinking back about how I got here.

It’s felt a little like a rollercoaster 6 years since I started working within the Construction Industry, the direction my career has taken in such a short space of time is something I could have never predicted. I’ve no doubt anything I class as successful during this period is mostly from the support and advice of my peers and mentors.

Starting within Account Management and Business Development, learning as much as I could from as many people as I could, applying everything that suited my personality, using the best of everyone to continually better myself. I by no means ever classed myself as the best, far from it. I just wanted to keep learning and improving.

From here myself and Mike Whitfield co-founded Advance Group. Mike’s experience and work ethic made him a great fit for the role of Managing Director. Mike being one of the people that had previously trained and guided me during the early days.

So, I slotted in with the natural progression of Sales & Marketing Director, looking to engage with potential clients and generate work for our new business. Again, learning as much as I could. This was a successful period for Advance Group, we sacrificed as much as we were able and started building our team, we worked with and continue to work with some amazing people.

The more we grew as a business it was becoming clear that the weight of work Mike was responsible for required individual focuses, short of Mike increasing his working day by 3 or 4 hours, which I’m entirely sure he would have been happy to do, but would have only left him a solid 42 minutes for sleep per night.

Following the recent capture of Guy Statham as our new Sales Director in October of last year, which has turned out to be invaluable, his knowledge of the construction industry and ability have made him a perfect fit! He’s become the end product that had previously been missing from our business development efforts. This timing was unplanned but a stroke of masterful luck. With Guy now directing the new business sales, retention, and profitability of the overall sales, I moved into the role of Managing Director and Mike, still responsible for everything but with more dedicated support is now the CEO.

I think it’s easy to get carried away with titles sometimes and to be proud of what you’re able to call yourself, certainly as a business owner. When we restructured our business and I was able to move into the position I felt like I have done every time I made a step up in my career, which is a feeling of “Right, now the real work starts”, how can I use everything I’ve learned and improve what I’ve been given?

The business now has directorship and a management structure, which will be needed as we gear up for some pretty ambitious goals for 2020 and beyond. We still work with amazing people, a lot of whom have been with us for years! Fully imbedded and representing our values daily. We’ll continue to do what we can to make this a place everyone is proud to be a part of.

 

If you would like to discuss any of our campaign offerings please contact me on 0151 357 2166 or email me on simon@advance-tm.co.uk and keep up to date with our journey into the next and exciting chapter via social media by liking, following or connecting to our pages.