Lessons from the Make It Thrive Podcast
This week, Integro’s own Tom Bool made an appearance on the Make It Thrive podcast, with host Lizzie Benton. Lizzie, who is a culture consultant, uses her expertise to take a deep dive into how business culture affects growth on Make It Thrive. During their conversation, Tom went way back to the founding of Integro in 2007 through today to explain where we are today – and the bumpy roads that got us there. And here’s what we’ve learned:
Sometimes talking about how far you’ve come can put things into perspective.
After being founded in 2007, Integro took on any new client it could find, translating anything and everything from data cabling to software to press releases to technical manuals. And we had a lot of clients. As Tom says, ‘It felt like success.’
Anyone working within the industry, particularly freelancers and small businesses, can attest to the attractiveness of taking on any work you possibly can. It’s easy to do. But as we started to grow, it became apparent we were chasing business in too many directions. We were actually spread too thin, delivering a lot of work that was great for some clients, and just all right for others.
Taking a step back can lead to some pretty major revelations.
After a bit of restructuring, we realised that we needed to be more honest – not only with ourselves but with our clients as well. We took a broad look into who our clients were, and they generally fell into three groups:
- the content, middle-ground clients that weren’t necessarily singing our praises but were happy with our service;
- the premium group, who loved what we did and who we loved working with;
- and our ropey relationships – those where client rapport had broken down, their needs were outside our remit, or anything else that made doing business with them difficult.
Specialisation means you’re better at what you do, and you don’t always have to say yes
Being honest, what we wanted was more of our premium clients: the best relationships, the material that we excelled at, and what we found altogether worth our time. Then, looking into what types of clients fell into the premium group, it was easy to suss out what we were good at: well-written, technical, marketing collateral.
After this, the direction of the business became hyper-focused, and it vastly improved the working culture. Employees knew what to pitch, company creativity and innovation rose, and it made it easy to vet clients as well as any future hires.
Where we are now
Today, Integro is more than just the translation services it provides. We are a languages support company, offering internationalized consulting services to marketing departments throughout the UK, Canada, and the US. We support our clients in their growth abroad by delving deep into what’s made their business successful and setting them up to perform globally.
We can’t thank Lizzie enough for inviting Tom and spotlighting Integro on her podcast. If you want to give it a listen, you can find it here on Spotify, or wherever you listen