What is your role at Rise At Seven?

Chief Growth Officer. My role is to drive growth of the business in UK and US. As someone who started life as a designer I’ve always loved the creative industries, albeit ironic now that my main responsibilities now involve more spreadsheets and slide decks than photoshop!

Where did it all start?

I was 15 years old when I first stepped into an agency, designing packaging and presenting mock ups to the creative director - who only had drawing boards in his office, no computers! That was it - I was hooked, the path took many twists and turns but eventually led me to start my first agency when I was 26, doing print, branding and trade show design. I had zero idea what I was doing outside of design, had a handful of amazing staff and made some great memories.

In 2013 I got taken under the wing of an incredibly experienced entrepreneur who taught me a lot about the business side of agency life, and helped me realise (what my mother had always told me) that I’m a much better leader than I am designer. Together we built up a business focused on mobile web and apps, which with an amazing senior leadership team we successfully sold to Interpublic Group (IPG) in 2016.

By this point I’d learnt how to build a business of 5 people, and roughly 50 - now I was obsessed with understanding what it takes to run one of 500 people. Another amazing leader saw something in me and gave me the chance to step into the broader media and advertising landscape within IPG.

This chapter of my journey taught me so much about people, the breadth and diversity of humans you interact with at global levels is as inspiring as it is challenging. So this is where I was fortunate enough to be part of scaling to 480 people, delivering performance media, digital transformation and multi-channel global campaigns for household names in both B2B and D2C verticals.

Once we’d hit that size myself and the CEO actually decided to go out alone and set up a growth consultancy for agencies which we built design thinking styled workshops that help agencies get beyond founder led sales. This was a big period of creative freedom for me, and we actually sold it quite quickly into The Ingenuity Group where I took on a Chief Operating Officer role and had the pleasure of spending time not just working with 100’s of agencies on their pitch and pipeline but also to respectfully spend time on the brand’s side of the table - seeing a pitch through their eyes was enlightening to say the least.

Then I met Carrie Rose. Instant chemistry and a clear set of complementary skills and shared values. After we met I said to my wife “I want to work late for Carrie Rose”, when I’m that passionate about something I believe in listening to your gut and so here we are - taking our clients and our Risers to the next level.

Experience so far:

The list of brands is too long, but there are two wildly different brand relationships I’m proud of because they’re underpinned with a deep understanding of that client’s business and couldn’t have been possible without full trust in the team.

Combining media and tech for Heidelberg Materials (a German multinational building materials company) We launched an “uber for concrete” service in Reading for SME builders. We built the app, ran targeted ads, flyered in builder merchants' car parks and sold (several) tonnes of concrete allowing the client to take a slice of the “middle man” market and built the foundations (no pun intended) for a multi-million dollar business line in Europe.

Delivering an emotional campaign focused on new parents with Water Wipes. Having produced an honest and real view of what parenting held in store in the form of a 20 minute documentary featuring parents from all backgrounds across the world we then ran an incredible campaign targeting multiple subsections of the journey to parenthood. Activating all digital channels across EMEA and North America, learning to deal with logistical issues (the product freezing in certain countries!) and managing stakeholders in each country (both brand and agency side). This taught me a lot but was also personal to me as I was at the beginning of my own journey to parenthood.

What I’m best at:

I’m the translator between creative and commercial. That’s it. That’s my superpower. What this allows me to do is empathise and understand creative people, analytical ones and wrap my head around every possible business model and figure out how to channel our amazing people at solving (and understanding!) the brand’s problems. And don’t get me wrong, my slides are always on point too ;)

What I’m known for:

I’m probably known for having fairly high positive energy, (I can hear the team laughing as I write this) but I’d hope I’m thought of as loyal, as someone who will always do what they said and deliver. I’m also a surfer and generally lover of anything ocean activity related - I’m rarely sitting still and if that can also be in the water then I’m a happy boy.

Strong opinion I have about my craft:

As an agency, if you’re not leading your clients then they’ll be leaving you!

Fun fact:

In my early 20’s I lived in and ran a pub in Swansea with two of my best mates. We had a wild time, made incredible memories, and not a lot of money. I also used to DJ a lot, peaking with playing to 3,000 people at a breaking competition and then flying off to play a festival in Croatia. I’m also incredibly humbled to have had the pleasure of delivering a TedX talk to 1,000 people (and the internet) about creativity in business.