We started Push in 2007 and for the first 5 years we grew, but we just muddled along; we didn't know exactly what we were great at.
In that time Ricky and I built up the business, we gradually introduced new employees into the team and we grew. But we didn't have anyone else that was challenging our thinking.So Ricky and I would confer with one another and try and work through issues, whether it was around HR, marketing, finance, everything you can imagine in business. But in 2012 we took on our very first coach; a guy called Paul Thomas, we still work with him today.We have since worked with other great coaches; they've all been fantastic. We worked with Nic Rixon, SGFE, we worked with Robert Craven as well, and we have found each of those coaches has fulfilled different purposes to help propel and drive our business further.I would say I'm almost staggered about how many businesses, whether they are digital agencies or other small businesses, how few of them use coaches. They are there really to try and help challenge you, give you inspiration, motivation, but I can't imagine now having a business where I wouldn't have some sort of coach involved. Sometimes several coaches in trying to direct, help me work through issues and generally challenge the way that I'm thinking about my business.Probably the single biggest thing we did in 2012 when we took on our first coach was to really focus hard on what we were good at. We understood with real clarity where our strengths were, and we honed down, we doubled down that and it will happen to be paid advertising; and that was when our business really started to take off.
