Author Archives: Danny Simpson

Macclesfield Town go up to the football league – #Champions

Firstly, a huge well done to everyone at Macclesfield Town Football Club, with thanks to all the commercial family for their huge support throughout the season.

Almost 12 months ago we partnered with the Silkmen and became their official digital media partner, supporting their online presence with our fantastic digital team, by creating some great ideas and keeping it simple.

Empowering your people

After we signed the agreement, I passed this relationship over to a couple of our team members with Martyn Barrow our regional business development manager at the front of the team to lead this partnership to success, for both us and the club and help galvanise the commercial family.

Together Martyn and the the team have taken the relationship and partnership to a whole new level, we now see the club as an extension of our business and team.

Giving people a goal, with some guidance mixed with opportunity is a great way to get success. This is a great demonstration of that.

Some people asked me, why leave it to them? They are not experts. I believe we can build even higher next season as we have laid some very solid foundations. What we have done in the first year has given me confidence to answer those sceptical people. I wanted them to have no walls and no boundaries with ideas, no idea of what works and what doesn’t, after all success comes from failing but having the passion and persistence to try again and keep learning. This is what the team and Martyn have done, and I can say they have made a great success of it and had a lot of fun along the way.

Empowering people and letting them feel comfortable and confident to fail is a must for me. I didn’t do this partnership all for ROI even though we did get the ROI after 6 months. I wanted to see what can be achieved by enabling some committed, trusted, passionate people to write some goals down from a crazy bunch of ideas. Then empowering and directing the team, and finally adding lots of fun.

The results speak for themselves. We have helped get an average video viewing of between 5-8 thousand per video, engage the local stores and supporters, had over 1 million interactions across our joint social platforms, won lots of new commercial and corporate business, made strong relationships, brought people together, created a reciprocal place for business support, advice and help, and the results carry on…

POST MATCH INTERVIEW: We caught up with John Askey after the match following a fantastic comeback by @thesilkmen! See the full interview over on our Facebook page here https://t.co/f6jYJ0hq8U pic.twitter.com/NPcMIhrFRH

— MID Communications (@MIDCommsUK) 10 February 2018

The club also learned that collaboration of your commercial partners and creating a tighter family of commercial relationships & group will drive the business’ & club’s success. I think more teams should adapt a relationship approach and move away from narrow minded transaction type mentality.

Building relationships, not sales – our approach with Macclesfield Town

Seeing us build strong relationships with people and businesses such as with Jon from Big Brand Ideas, Nick Bianchi from Arighi Bianchi, Macclesfield Town front of shirt sponsor, and so many others shows the power of team work and group passion.

Next time you’re thinking about doing a sponsorship or partnership, think about what is it you really want to achieve. How can you help the club or business? How can you help other businesses already associated move forward?

Doing business like this, builds strong relationships, gets great engagement for your business and people and adds value to your brand and others associated. I’m proud of my team for how they’ve handled this relationship and want to strive for this approach going forward!

Spotting talent to help grow your business.

So, this week we officially announced that Jennifer Hulme is our first non-executive board member, as we start to scale the business even further and build the MID Group.

Having great people in your business is essential, as you will very much already know, and good people are sometimes hard to come across. Making sure they fit in with your people, your culture and also that you can work with them is essential.

I am lucky to have three great senior leaders, all in very different journeys. For one of them in particular, their journey has taken them to become our first non-executive director.

Two out of three leaders have developed through our business both starting from a manager to becoming a major part and a real influence on how our business runs at a senior level. So, developing people is vital but it starts with spotting the talent, to begin with.

I always work on a 7/10 rule. Meaning, if I make 10 decisions, 7 will likely be right and 3 will likely be wrong but I can reflect and learn from them. This helps me manage my emotions of making a bad decision. Rather than beating myself up about them, I manage my own expectations on whether I will make a mistake or make a wrong decision.

So, as Jennifer shares some great and exciting news this week, let’s look at Jennifer as a great example that may help you and your business.

Jennifer joined our business in September 2015, and I remember seeing lots of great HR candidates, at least 12 – 14.

I remember we did the first round of finals and no one really showed they had the MID factor, it was only on the two trench finalist’s that we saw Jennifer.

Jenn stood out head and shoulders above the rest, for a multiple reasons, some of which I have spoke below about to help.

I am going to let you know what I did to help myself discover if and how Jenn had the MID factor.

• Jennifer had a keen desire and passion to succeed, she demonstrated a lot of sacrifices to get success in both her work and personal life. This showed that she wanted to win, she was really focused when she knew what she wanted. She was hungry for the opportunity and took plenty of risks in the interview, she didn’t give textbook responses. Instead, she presented with passion and energy.

• Jenn showcased a wealth of experience but it seemed she had not been offered a place at the table to express herself and her capabilities. By asking the right questions we were able to discover that she has great ideas, and plenty of them, but the corporate machines had chosen to overlook them, as some do with arrogance and the ‘business-knows-best’ mentality. This was clear as most businesses will experience similar challenges.

• After asking some further questions she had experienced a lack of authentic leadership, coaching and development. She invested in herself, with things like the CIPD and a passion to move through it and become a external influencer, and had not been supported in doing this. It appeared she didn’t really have any regular dedicated coaching sessions that were developing and leading her rather than managing her – so many business don’t coach development, instead, they manage the performance.

Even though performance is important, developing the person is equally important, as this is how the person improves and performance improves on its own. The person will become better equipped to perform and, therefore, they become far more capable.

Are you managing more than leading or have you got a good enough balance, I try and find a good balance with my senior team. If you are not prepared to invest in yourself and those around you, don’t expect others or your business to.

Believe in you and invest in you, after all, your brain is your best tool in life, why not invest in making it better and more effective!

Lessons in a summary.

As you can see there are some really amazing things you can pick up on by asking the right questions. Try today by asking a couple of different questions to see if you get different answers that may allow you discover and uncover some new talent in your people, friends and who knows maybe even your family and children.

In summary, make sure that if people say they want success and they really want to be successful, ask yourself how bad do they want it? How do they show it? What have they sacrificed to get it or are they expecting success to just happen?

Give people opportunity.

Sometimes I feel like I am not a CEO, I feel like I am a COE, a Chief Opportunity Engineer. If you give people the parameters to work in, empower them and guide them, they will almost always flourish.

Investing in you and your people.

How often are you, the candidate or the team member in question? Are you self-developing or going to free seminars to expand your knowledge and skills and build relationships.

Understand leadership truly and spiritually. How to lead more than manage, the job is more enjoyable when you lead and connect with people emotionally.

Ask yourself or event look at what people bring to your table. If Jesus brought wine and bread then everyone must bring something, look for it and ask people what are you contributing to the business. Do they know how they can contribute? Do they understand the impact of them contributing?

Seek questions that make you think – can you see the woods for the trees?

Read more about Jenns’s latest journey in the latest Press Release, here.

Alternatively, you can view the full news clipping by clicking here.

I hope this article can help you and offer you some food for thought when seeking or scouting for talent.

Watch out for my VLOGs coming soon, as we asked our digital media apprentice to start doing some interviews about key topics with certain leaders, especially the interviews with each of my senior teams.

Our first Board Member and HR Director, Jennifer Hulme, will soon feature in our upcoming videos which could include showcasing her experience, offering some great business insights and most of all, providing some really key information for local businesses.

Until next time… keep being awesome!