By Sean Reddington, CEO of Thrive Learning.
Any business leader wants to see their business succeed. Goals, and what success looks like, might differ from person to person but if we’re being honest, organisational growth is a good marker. However, along the way there are many challenges and hurdles to overcome, including competing against ‘the big boys’. Aka the established players in the market who already have a stronghold on clients.
For many businesses, building a business from VC funding can be a huge help and benefit, but at Thive, we wanted to build a business using organic growth. As a result, we’re competing against companies with a billion-dollar market cap. So far, we have turned down over 80 acquisition and investment requests, simply because we know the value of Thrive and have a clear plan for what we want to achieve.
The big question is what can smaller businesses, challenger brands, and industry disruptors bring to the table to make themselves stand out and not only win business, but begin to take it from the clutches of bigger organisations? Just like Thrive has been able to.
Create exceptional customer experiences: For us, customer experience was one of the biggest ways we were able to create a truly competitive edge. As we grew, we formed a clear customer-led strategy to ensure they always came first, and we continued to deliver exceptional and personalised experiences for each and every client. We prioritise one-to-one approaches and have real conversations with people to understand individual challenges and pain points so we can create genuinely game-changing solutions – not just out of the box offers.
To capitalise on this, we provide face-to-face support and time with our team to attend stakeholder meetings, launches and workshops, as well as monthly roundtable events and community-led webinars. Our annual conference, Thrive Live, is exclusive to our customers and includes practical workshops, discussions, and keynote speakers, giving in-depth insight into the business world and how to navigate it.
We are passionate about supporting our clients and we ensure that passion and determination shines through; it’s a partnership for the long-term, not a case of sign on the line and see you later. And we know it works as we get incredible feedback. What’s more, this year we have already secured partnerships with household names in the UK and internationally – Avon, Burger King, Reiss, Naos, Nothing Bundt Cakes to name just a few. That’s not us bragging, just the truth.
As we transitioned from being seen as a ‘challenger brand’ to a partner to enterprises, it was really important to everyone in the business we held onto our customer-centric approach and strategy. For us, it’s not about just creating that experience in the early days either, we want to grow with our customers and be the solution which can enable that growth. It’s a business fundamental we will never change.
Stay agile: From this stems agility which is something a smaller business can offer the larger players simply can’t because of hoops and hurdles they must jump through. If a customer comes to us with a challenge and we don’t yet have a solution, we’ll work with them to build or create it. It’s this level of agility which sets us apart – we don’t try and force our valued clients to fit into a mould, we create the mould to fit them. This approach has won both us and our clients awards and we’ve been able to develop new solutions we can roll out as part of our core offering.
Create better teams and culture: The team and the culture you create is fuel for growth. No matter what their current mindset, long-established businesses will come with their own hereditary issues when it comes to teams. For example, in the world of tech, women hold only 26.7% of tech-related jobs[1]. As a relatively new company, we can change the mentality of business and change the status quo when it comes to people and culture.
At Thrive, we’re incredibly fortunate to have such a strong and experienced leadership team. To me, it seems crazy to not tap into all of the potential knowledge and expertise out there to drive the business forward, which is why with two recent appointments this year, we are incredibly proud to have an equal 50:50 split women to men on our leadership team, including Koreen Pagano as Chief Product Officer and Niloufar Zarin as Head of AI. Nearly twice as many people as the industry standard.
Our business benefits feed into our wider company culture. Supporting a true ‘work life balance’ is key to Thrives success, by actively engaging with our team members who have families through small acts, such as creating t-shirts and teddies for all of our employee’s kids and making sure they get a birthday present every year, so they can better understand where their parents go every day, and to say thank you to them. It’s a part of our values and our core offering (not a benefit!) to be flexible and understanding, and we look for different ways to remind our team.
This leads to everyone at Thrive grafting hard and bringing passion and care into the business. Most of our success has come from ideas that have been sparked in conversation with everyone, so I want to ensure as a business we can continue to tap into that knowledge and idea stream and encourage even more collaboration across the team where we can. Not just have a board of directors who make all the decisions.
Embrace technology: At Thrive, we practice what we preach, and we use our own technology within our business. The learning, development and growth culture is embedded into the heart of Thrive so when we speak to our customers, we are experts in how it works. Our customers are equipped with the necessary tools to master the art of coaching and mentoring for their team, providing them with the essential guidance, support, and inspiration to succeed. We use our AI-driven solution to do everything from upskilling our team to create even better customer experiences, as well as enable people to progress and develop in their roles. We can communicate with each other more effectively across offices – both Thrive offices and people’s offices at home.
Challenger brands, disruptors and those setting out to change the game are the backbone of our industry. While sometimes it can seem like an incredible challenge to succeed, take on the established brands and win the business, by embracing a new mindset and forging your own path your business can Thrive.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/shereeatcheson/2023/03/07/powerful-tech-stats-for-international-womens-day/?sh=2922be646624.
