Today on ScaleUp Radio, I interview Dan Maudhub who set up Wonderful, which is a creative digital agency about 13 years ago and over that time, he's built it to about 18 people, somewhere between one and 2 million pounds turnover.

So a nice strong growth over that time and lots of lessons along the way, covering all sorts of aspects of building and scaling a business. 

It's a technology led creative business, but Dan’s very clear that actually, it's really about the human led digital experiences,  human first is a phrase he uses. So it's not all about the technology, it is about the human experience first, supported by the technology.

So we spend some time looking at the people side of the business and Dan is very strong about the culture. They've recently moved to what he calls a remote first way of working so they've gone from being primarily office based to being remote first, but they still link in some office based activities and they've put in place a number of tactics within the business to make sure that they keep their culture really strong.

I also want you to listen out for Dan's four stage recruitment process They have clearly defined what each step is about and vary it slightly within those steps depending on the specific role. 

So strong consistent growth, but he'd be the first to admit that he hasn't got it all right along the way, and has made plenty of mistakes,. Dan talks about some of the key ones and some of the ups and downs that he's had along the way. So it's not all been plain sailing. 

One of those things was needing to buy out one of the early directors of business as they started seeing things differently and that process around him exiting from the business. They also moved on to developing their own technology not so long ago in response to their clients’ demands and we discuss some of the challenges around that including whether they're a product or service led company now and where does the new product fit within the business? 

So lots of really good insights here. You can't fail to get this discussion. So let's go across and listen to the rest of the story.

 

Dan can be found here:

linkedin.com/in/danmaudhub

https://www.bewonderful.co.uk/

[email protected]

 

Resources

2Bobs Podcast - https://2bobs.com/

Small Spark Theory podcast - https://www.gunpowderconsulting.com/podcasts/

OmniBI - https://omnibi.co.uk/

 

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