The ‘Active’ ingredient for success

What is your role in the business and how has it changed?

I’d like to say my role is as a ‘strategist’. When the business was a lot smaller I had to do lots of different jobs and muck in where I was needed. Once we had a clear direction of where we wanted to go, what we wanted to achieve and then got on with doing it, we all had clearly defined roles, areas of specialism and responsibilities. That allowed us to concentrate on the things that are a strategic priority, rather than the things that suck you back into the day to day.

Over time my role’s evolved more into strategy, brand and profile. I’m now often pushed forward as the face of the company and ultimately it’s my job to be the public figurehead whether that’s attracting clients, attracting staff or attracting professional referral partners that introduce business to us.

How do you feel about being the face of the ‘Active’ Brand?

I’ve almost accepted that it’s part of my job. I don’t mind doing it, but I don’t always want it to be me. I feel sometimes, when I’m the one that’s featured all the time, people just think it’s me and my ego, and it isn’t. Active genuinely isn’t the ‘Karl Pemberton show’, there’s a massive team behind us here. A lot of the publicity we’ve got over the last few years is quite new to us and, in a way, I can’t ask someone else in the business to do something if I’m not prepared to do it myself.

It’s also why I keep changing my look so hopefully people don’t get bored. I’ll have a big ginger beard and thick glasses next!

Where did Active come from and what’s the businesses background?

Active was born out of the company my fathers previously worked for that ceased trading. The team who ran that business decided they didn’t want to be in financial services anymore. Dad had worked with them for 14 years and he had a lot of longstanding clients.

Active was born in 2000 when my dad formed his own company to carry on looking after those clients. I think the name came from the good old ‘think of something beginning with A’ so we would be at the start of the phone book.

When did you join Active’s journey?

I joined in 2007 and Active was based on Guisborough high street at the time. We were very much a small local business looking after small Teesside based clients, the normal man on the street. I assisted the firm whilst employed with Yorkshire Bank when my father was really poorly in late 2004, before joining officially in 2007 following a brief spell with RBS.

It was clear at the time that the business was basically him. Without him it struggled to operate, not because anything was wrong, simply because the clients were very reliant upon him. They loved him and the service he gave them that much that when he wasn’t there all of the clients put things on hold saying ‘we’ll just wait for Glyn to come back’. But of course, as a business, you still need the income coming in to keep the firm running.

Something needed to change so we could make the business sustainable without it being reliant on one person. Thankfully, my Dad recovered and we began building Active into a more substantial, resilient and strategic business. You’ve got to make the business as bulletproof as possible and going through that journey as a family proved that it needed to change.

The family values have always been at the heart of the business, how difficult has it been to protect the culture as the business has grown?

In one sense I would say it’s been easy because it’s so important to us. We’ve always known it has to be protected, developed and be encouraged. It’s difficult as we grow, the more people you have the harder it is to maintain a culture but having an inclusive approach to defining and communicating our brand internally has really helped with this.

It’s important our values and culture influence our recruitment process and approach so we find people we know are going to fit.

How important is your brand to supporting your culture, vision and values?

It’s crucial for any business to know what makes it tick, what makes it special and to remain authentic. It isn’t always just the generic business things like sales, profit, turnover and efficiencies. It’s our culture, our people, how much they enjoy coming to work, how much they feel valued when they are at work and how do we reward people.

I believe focusing purely on the results is where a lot of our former employers have gone wrong. It ultimately means some really good people leave the big banking institutions and have come to work for us, because all they focus on are the results in the end and they don’t really care about the people. We want our team, and the people around the business, to live and breathe the Active brand and be brand ambassadors for us.

Does everyone understand the importance and value of investing in your brand?

When Dad ran the business he ‘was’ the brand in most customer’s eyes. We recognised going forward that this had to change. I think when we began talking about investing in Brand, we needed to understand what ‘brand’ meant and realised it went much deeper than a logo and colour scheme.

How important is it that the brand evolves as the business grows?

We progressed significantly five years ago, we’d become quite a substantial firm although our brand gave the reflection that we were still quite small and local. We’d outgrown our brand and needed to up our game in a big way. I think our brand always has to reflect who we are and constantly support the direction that we’re moving in.

The brand REDISCOVER process that we’re going through now is really important. It’s been 4 years since the last brand was launched and we’re always looking to evolve. As the business grows and our market place and competition develop, we need to stay ahead.

I get a kick out of getting better and improving, and I look at every aspect of the business for that. I don’t see any point in running a business to standstill. There are always margins to improve here and there. If you look at F1 they talk about the 1 percents. The margins in F1 are so tiny so if they can do something that squeezes an extra 0.1% per lap it could be the difference between winning or coming fifth.

I want Active to be the best firm of financial advisors in the area and the best versions of ourselves that we can be. As our competition naturally catches up or does things that are similar to us, we have that burning desire to keep our foot on the gas and keep improving. Ultimately that’s what gives us a competitive advantage.”

How do you measure return on investment on the brand project and what metrics do you use?

The key for us is increasing average client spend and attracting the right type of clients. If we increase both our business grows.

We’re focusing on quality rather than quantity. Although the down side of a business that’s got a history dating back to 1986 means you have thousands of clients in our CRM that we could potentially have to service.

What’s the best thing about your job and has that changed over time?

I love seeing an idea come to fruition, and seeing the results from ideas no matter whether it’s mine or one from the team. It gives me reassurance, it gives me confidence, and allows us to go out and do more which ultimately benefits our clients and our business.

If we do well we can invest more in the team in terms of rewards, and it allows to protect and develop the culture we’re so proud of.

What are you most proud of and why?

Firstly, winning the ‘Employer of the Year’ Award recently for the FSB (Federation of Small Businesses). It was really humbling and very nice to be recognised by an external body for doing the right thing. It makes it feel nice, it makes it feel worthwhile. We don’t necessarily always get the comfort of knowing what we’re doing is working, but to be recognised as being exceptional and doing something great for the team is actually really rewarding. It’s encouraging and drives us to keep doing what we’re doing.

Secondly, to become a Chartered Director with the Institute of Directors last year was a really a proud moment.

I’m actually really proud of myself because I never thought I would ever be qualified to that level, and probably if you ask some of my former teachers they probably would never have thought that either!

I wouldn’t class myself as the world’s greatest academic, but I have always had that drive to develop myself and improve.

What does the future hold for you and for Active?

There’s still that continuous desire to improve and get better at what we do. Better doesn’t necessarily mean bigger. We’ll always be thinking creatively and having ideas that can improve what we do, the service we deliver, and how we’re perceived in the industry.