Joining managing director Lawrence Jones, Nick Brown, chief executive of Eazyfone Group, was one of 2009's success stories, turning a loss in 2008 into a £3.3million profit.
By dismissing the idea of a budget ceiling and encouraging 'open-minded focus', Nick told fellow panellists, Danny Schweiger, joint managing director of Character World, Jeremy Isaacs, managing director at Corporate Auctions, Louise Knight, a strategic advisor to entrepreneurs and Graham Small, a partner at Lewis Hymanson Small Solicitors, that he was able to successfully eliminate employee expectations and surpass their initial targets, more than doubling their predicted annual turnover.
He said:
"The absolute dedication to set out what it is that we want to achieve but with a spirit of open-mindedness allows the flexibility to come in if it isn't going the way that we want it to."
By encouraging the entire organisation to think of themselves as internet marketers, Nick believes that they can look beyond the business original purpose to seize new opportunities.
Celebrating their fourth consecutive year as the ISPA Best Hosting Provider in the UK, UKFast also continued to grow despite the ailing climate, expanding their workforce to over 100 people. In line with the Internet Advertising Bureaus findings that web advertising is now the best route to market in the UK, UKFast extended beyond their responsibilities of hosting to adopt an educational marketing stance.
Lawrence said:
"If you’re an internet marketer you can immediately touch and make money in any area.
"We've tried to educate people in our industry, which is a very new industry, to try and help grow their businesses. We are not just hosting, we are facilitating a faster growth than any other hosting provider out there."
Additional key aspects that were credited by the panel for facilitating business growth in 2009 were great leadership, engaging and aligning employees, flexibility and being able to identify an opportunity and take advantage of it.
The Round Table discussions are held in association with UKFast with the aim of uniting business leaders to share advice and provide a wealth of ideas for other developing companies. They are held bi-monthly and tackle varying and sometimes difficult themes and issues.
