I founded internal communication consultancy blue goose in 1996 and sold the business in a management buyout in 2018, some 22 years later. Yet for the first ten years blue goose was essentially a “look-alike” agency with little to differentiate it from the competition. Outwardly we looked successful, but on the inside it felt very different. We were mostly working for the wrong clients on the wrong projects, for too little return, and often at the mercy of their dysfunctional ways of working. Despite a decade of hard work I was low on confidence, unsure what I was doing, why, or where I was going. It felt like I’d created a prison and was being held hostage inside. The only thing I felt certain about was that something needed to change.

So how to escape? Pivotal was the realisation that I’d been making the same decisions as most other agency owners. Decisions that at the time seemed sound, safe and rational had created an agency with little to distinguish it. Clients had few reasons to choose us and we were easily replaceable. To get the agency I wanted and not the one I had, meant making seemingly risky, contradictory, and often very different decisions. I had to unthink ten years of taking the path of least resistance.

Over the next two years I rebuilt the agency as a place where interesting clients facing serious change, challenge or opportunity went for sharp strategy and brilliant creative. From 2008 we worked across some of the biggest and most complex employee engagement programmes in the UK, Europe and globally. From Sainsbury’s, HSBC and McDonalds, to Barclays, Burberry, Anglo American and Maersk, clients came to us because we were experts with experience and results few agencies could match.

My experience and expertise has been earned in the trenches… and I can share insight, understanding and guidance that will help you avoid them or get out of them - fast.