Leadership,
Strategy &
Growth
An interview with
Paul Essery
Podcast interview with Paul Essery

Extracts from this interview are available on the following pages
Full transcript
Paul: Give people a little bit of background about yourself and about the business and then we'll talk about how you kind of built it in a moment.
Bob: So I was one of those lucky people that had a great education, managed to get a great job after university. Then the first bit of my career was dipping in and out of corporate blue chip type businesses. And at the other end of the extreme start working with very small businesses and I was lost really.
I was trying to find my place, found a good place in the middle of my career, running medium sized businesses. So up to 50, 50 million turnover, 500 staff, but then got a bit fed up with working for other people, realized I wanted to do my own thing. So in 2004, I started my own business, which, as you say, is MD2MD.
Paul:Tell us a little bit about what MD2MD does. I mean, because it kind of reflects some of the learning that you'd had in the past, didn't it?
Bob: Oh, absolutely. Whilst I'd got an MBA and all kinds of brilliant qualifications, while I was running those medium sized businesses, I joined a business leader peer group and loved it. It was a great forum. I learned so much from people who weren't like me, you know, today, diversity inclusion is a big thing. Well, I learned masses and people who left school at 16 with no qualifications. And I was the sort of geek academic at the other end of the spectrum. So I realized I had a lot to learn from peers.
I loved it when I was running businesses myself. So in 2004 when I started my own business, that's what I decided to do. It's the Remington story for those old enough to remember the Remington advert. I liked it so much. I bought the business only. I didn't buy the business. I started from scratch and began to build MD2MD as a better version of what I'd experienced when I was in corporate life.
Paul: For people that aren't familiar with peer groups, explain out a little bit about how they work.
Bob: The essence of it is that most business leaders don't want to listen to any academics or consultants or theory people. The person they love to listen to and chat with about business is another business leader.
So the essence of it is getting together a group of about a dozen business leaders to talk to each other about their business challenges. And act almost as business coaches for each other in a group. So people share a challenge they're facing and everybody else helps them work through how to deal with it.
And one of the most interesting things is it's amazing how open people can be when they feel safe with other people like them. It's the one space where an MD can be completely open about their challenges, because in the day job everybody expects them to know all the answers. So they have to pretend they know the answer to the staff and the customers when in their heart, they know actually, you know, I'm busking it a bit. I'm trying to find my way. I'm trying to work it out myself.
Paul: So when you go back 20 years just tell us about your thinking at that point.You decided to create a peer group network. How did you approach the kind of process of growing the business? What was your thinking at that point?
Bob: Yeah, interesting. I sort of got one thing Right. And one thing that I wouldn't say I got wrong, it was no choice, but I didn't realize the impact of it. So the thing I got right was I'd had a business earlier in my life and it was very lumpy. Uh, you either sold a contract and loads of work and you're over, you're stressed out trying to deliver it, or you had no contract and you were busy trying to sell the next one.
And so I decided that wasn't the way I wanted to live my life. And so I decided the business I set up had to be based on recurring income, a subscription type model. So MD2MD was a membership organization as I created it. So I'd got a regular income, maybe not as much as I'd like, but at least it wouldn't suddenly go away.
It was, you know, coming in every month. So that decision was a good one. And I look back and think, yeah, that I'm really pleased I made that decision. The bit that I didn't really understand the impact of was the fact that I was starting with no money behind me. And I knew that I wasn't going to take investment because I had enough of working for other people's businesses, so I didn't want to share the equity.
I didn't want to second mortgage a house. And What that meant was getting going was really difficult, really difficult, because spending a pound on marketing was a pound less to pay the mortgage. And so I was continuously right on edge trying to sort of get the business to grow, but at the same time pay the mortgage and support the family and everything else you have to do in the middle of your life.
So looking back that was very challenging. I don't think there's much I could have done differently. Because to do something differently would have meant mortgage in the house, as I say, or taking equity owners. But I underestimate the challenge that meant.
Paul: And how long did it take from when you started to when you got a bit more comfortable? Does it ever get comfortable?
Bob: I would say it was at least five, if not 10 years, that I was scrambling around trying to grow the business. And, you know, the only way I had to grow the business was my own time, really. It's not infinite, but I could go to events, build a reputation, get to know people.
That's the way MD2MD grew probably for the first 10 years. It was my own reputation, if you like. And I managed to do a good job there. I had a few times where I'd sort of explain what we did. And they said, Oh, like MD2MD. Oh, you've already heard of us. And so I managed to get the brand out and quite well known across quite a decent area.
So that worked well, but it was a slow, steady growth, far slower than, I would encourage other people to do, but nevertheless, it's the reality of my limited budget for sales and marketing, basically.
Paul: Yeah. So that's the process of sort of recruiting people. What about the process of delivering the kind of membership offer?
I mean, just talk about how that worked and how did that perhaps change over time?
Bob: It didn't change dramatically pre COVID, although we could talk about COVID in a minute if you want. The basic model was the same, a day together. Speaker in the morning, booked a lot of great professional speakers. That was great insight for me too.
But the essence, the afternoon, the peer group conversation, I think I got a lot better over time at facilitating those conversations. One of the things I would say I learned about facilitation is that people think of facilitation as being. Sort of soft and a soft activity, a soft touch thing. I learned that actually, if the meeting is going to work effectively, in particular meeting of managing directors who are not known to be shrinking violets, I have to be quite strong in guiding the meeting, you know, because otherwise the loud voice gets heard most and talks most.
And the quieter voices don't get involved. So, you know, as facilitator, I'd be quite strong with the dominant individuals and hold them back and quite strong in encouraging the quieter individuals to come forward and volunteer their thoughts too.
Paul: And that requires a bit of confidence, doesn't it?
Bob: Yes. Because of my background, I wasn't too worried about it, but my confidence grew and my skill grew over the years. I mean, it's something that it's only now I look back and realise how practised I was at doing that, if you see what I mean.
Paul: You mentioned COVID. That created a bit of a problem for quite a lot of businesses. I suspect it created challenges for you and MD2MD. I mean, tell us a little bit about that and how, you know, what the impact of that was.
Bob: Very interesting because I'm one of the lucky people. COVID was not a bad experience for me personally, but it was a great experience for me in business.
I'd always believed, and I'd seen many MD2MD members in the 2006/2007/2008 financial crash, I've seen that some members took very strong decisions and because of it came out of the financial recession, a much better place. So I'd learned from that. And when COVID came along, I thought, how do we turn this problem to an opportunity? And of course, if you think about it, sort of dispassionately. What did MDs want in, you know, in the stage of COVID? I want to talk to somebody. What the hell's going on? Who can I talk to? And so one of my claims to fame is I've predicted the problem a month in advance the Bank of England and the government. We had members saying we've got a problem with our supply chain, our Chinese factory shut down.
So we began to discuss the impact of COVID. As I say a month before we realized quite how bad it was going to be, but people were planning for it. I guess that helped me as well, because as soon as it was announced, we pivoted to online meetings weekly from being face to face meetings for the whole day, every month, we went to one hour meetings once a week for everybody.
And we dropped the speakers because nobody was interested in strategy and long term stuff. They were, you know, and culture and all that. Nice stuff. It was like, no, what am I going to do tomorrow? What is furlough anyway? So we went to one hour meetings weekly. It was fantastic. Then we, as the world got back in control of the things, went to two weekly meetings and then three weekly meetings.
And then eventually we've ended up with monthly peer group meetings, separate speaker meetings going on every week. And four times a year. Now we meet face to face versus the 12 times before. So we've sort of gone, ended up in a blended model. Which is very different and very different from our competitors, but I think much more effective in terms of use of time and value for money.
Paul: And so, I mean, when COVID passed, I mean, were you thinking at that point, we need to have a new business model? Or was it just that evolved on the basis of what you learnt from being in the kind of heat of COVID? I mean, just tell us about how that evolved, that new model.
Bob: Yes. So it was in between the two really, it wasn't even a natural evolution.
We were consciously making decisions. You know, we made the decision to go online and then we were debating what [00:10:00] we're going to do when COVID comes to an end as things started to look a bit better and when are we going to go back to face meetings and we consciously made the decision not to go back to full face to face, but to go back to a blended model.
It was in between the two. It wasn't a sort of sudden decision, but neither was it a sort of just letting it happen. We were controlling things, but the big decision I made in COVID, I mean, apart from the pivot, which I've just described, the other thing I did during COVID, looking back was 100 percent right was I trebled our marketing spend.
I'd seen some of my members do that during the financial crash, and they came out, as I say, very much stronger. And that was entirely the right decision. We tripled our membership during the COVID period. So we went to 100 members very quickly, really. And so, you know, coming out of COVID, we're in a far better position than we went into it.
Paul: Yeah. And then in terms of where you went from there. So, I mean, you recently exited, didn't you? [00:11:00] Or almost completely exited. Just tell us about that final bit of the journey where you've got a well established brand, a well established business. It's been through COVID. It's come out stronger. I mean, tell us about the final bit where you decided that you, it was time to, to move on or do things differently.
I mean, just tell us about that process.
Bob: That's interesting because actually wasn't to do with COVID, but COVID sort of helped it. I'd begun to think in 2018, 2019 about retiring or semi retiring, not because I wanted to stop doing things, but because I actually wanted to do things that you can't do when you're busy running an operational business.
I've been saying to myself for years, I'm going to write my book. You know, and every year I kicked myself because I never got around to it and then realized, actually, when you've got customers and prospective customers knocking on the door, you never get around to doing things like sit down and write a book, unless you're very strong.
So I decided I was never going to write the book while I was running a business day to day while I was operational. So I decided 2018, 2019, I was going to retire COVID came along as I just said, and during COVID I was working, you know, 24 seven ish, you know, I was literally getting up at seven in the morning and working till 11 at night every day because actually you couldn't do much else apart from go for a walk for an hour and things were going great and I smelt the opportunity and was grabbing it, but that sort of reinforced the need to retire.
So when came out of COVID, it was right now's the time to do it. Fortunately, I've had a great number two. Who, you know, was keen to step up, bought into the business. I had a great friend who was also freed up and looking for a venture to get involved with. So between them, they now run the business, one as chairman and one as managing director.
Paul: And in terms of your life post MD2MD, what sort of things do you use from what you learned to MD2MD with what you're doing now, because you do sort of coaching and mentoring and stuff now. I mean, tell us a bit about that transition.
Bob: Yeah. Well, let me just briefly. quite slightly adjust what you said, because the, the, the priority for me is getting the book written.
That's something I just feel I want to do. I'm not expecting to make money from it, but it reaches a lot of people. And I feel a passionate need to share everything I've learned. You know, it's like, I've gone through all these hassles. I've got all these things wrong. I don't want you to make the same mistakes.
So I've got to share it. So the book is a great way of doing that. And I'm now working on the book. It will come out hopefully early next year. And surrounding a book comes speaking, which is the second biggest way of reaching people to share your insights. Uh, so, you know, in order, I would say I'm an author, a speaker and I facilitate meetings for people because I've got a lot of skill in that I've realized, and then I do coaching and mentoring as well.
What I talk about is what I've learned from running the businesses in my mid career, or probably more importantly, what I've learned over the last 20 years, because it feels to me like I've had a fantastic privilege. I counted up, I facilitated 800 meetings online and offline, 800 meetings over the 20 years. Each of those meetings has got six to 12 business leaders. They're talking about half a dozen business challenges. That's a phenomenal sort of amount of information that's gone into my brain. And that means I've spotted some patterns. There are some common things that challenge people. The obvious ones being imposter syndrome and it's lonely at the top, those sorts of things.
But there are many other things that, you know, I think, yeah, I've seen this before and I've seen what happens, you know, and that's what I think makes me valuable in being able to write a book and speak and coach a mentor.
Paul: Yeah, bringing all that experience to the table, isn't it? And a final question, really.
I mean, when you look back over your experience, the work you put into building the business and your career before that, what would you, if there were one or two really important lessons that you could draw from your experiences, what would they be?
Bob: Yeah. Well, there's one really big one that shouts at me every time I look back at my business career, my business life. That is the importance of strategy. You see, I spent most of my life doing things right. If you like, rather than necessarily doing the right things. I was very good at running business. I really enjoyed running a lean, smart business, but I've learned that actually Being in the right place at the right time is far more important than doing the right things.
But in my career, I never did that. MD2MD is to be quite blunt, is quite a difficult sell. Nobody comes along and says, I've got a budget to buy a business peer group for the MD. I've never come across anybody having a budget for that. So you're always selling against not doing anything. And even worse than that, you're selling against them going to the chairman and saying, I want to spend some money on myself. That doesn't go down very well. I want to spend some money on my own development. That doesn't go down very well - surely you're good enough. That's why we appointed you - and anyway if you need help, I can help you.
So it's a really tricky sell.
You can do it and people understand the value of it and we have been successful, but it wasn't the easiest sell in the world. If I'd been selling, say solar panels, I might have made a lot more money and being a lot more successful. I wouldn't have had much fun, but I wouldn't learn as much, So you need to look at being in the right place at the right time.
Actually, if you don't mind, I've got one more quick thought that I’m equally passionate about.
The first point was about being in the right place at the right time, strategy and the importance of strategy. The second thing I've learned is that success in business comes from persisting and learning. What I mean by that is one of the things I got wrong and indeed I've seen other people get wrong is to keep grasping at new things and the sales and marketing people, including me, as you know, are guilty of this. We sell things as if this is going to be your magic answer. This is the thing that's going to solve your problems. And particularly in sales and marketing, this is going to generate loads of leads, loads of interest, whatever. It very rarely happens like that. You know, these bright new things never work straight away.
So I have a view that none of them work straight away. So don't expect that. But also mirror image, any of them can work if you spend the time understanding how to make them work for you. So to illustrate that: Our most successful growth period was using email marketing. When everybody was saying, That's not going to work. Email marketing is dead. People don't read emails too much spam around. But it does work, but only if you understand how to make it not look like email marketing and to approach people personally. I see the same again and again, I've got a client who still generates all their business through cold calling. Can you believe that? In today's world cold calling? But it still works because they know how to do it really well for their client base. So for me, it's about stick to something, learn how to make it work. And then keep doing it rather than keep grasping at the magic solution the salespeople are trying to tell you.
Paul: Well, Bob, thank you. for sharing that story. It's a very neat way of encapsulating 20 years. I'm impressed by that. So thank you for sharing that. And you know, I hope your kind of next stage of your career works out as well.
Bob: I'm sure. Well, it will work out because I'll make it work out. That's the nature of the entrepreneur, you know, but yeah, I'm going to, I'm having fun.
That's the great thing. I'm really lucky you know, at a great stage of life and able to do what I want to do with people I want to work with.