Episode 74 – Simon Williams – DMW Group

Welcome to the first episode of Climb In Consulting for 2021. In today’s episode I speak to Simon Williams, Co-Founder of DMW Group and Non-Executive Director at LanciaConsult. Simon spent the vast majority of his career building DMW Group, which he and the team grew from just two of them, after a rather interesting start to the business, into a company of over 200 consultants today. Having spent 27 years growing DMW, Simon now advises a range of businesses and is a trustee to his old university college. One of these businesses is LanciaConsult and is how Simon came to being on the podcast, having been introduced by LanciaConsult’s Managing Partner Jeff Cronkshaw following our interview for this show. As you’d expect from someone who spent so long at the helm of a consulting business, Simon has wealth of experience when it comes to growing a successful consulting firm and leading through both the good times and the bad, much like where we find ourselves right now with the Covid-19 pandemic. In this interview Simon shares many of the insights that he’s learnt from his time building DMW and goes in to detail on many of the unorthodox elements of the DMW journey including: - Why DMW almost failed before it got started, and how Simon went from one of the most junior members of the team to leading the business in just a few short years. - DMW’s approach to partnering and why they decided to take the unusual route of collaborating with other boutique consulting firms to help them all win more business. - And Simon’s advice for navigating challenging times, like the ones we’re in now. How DMW was able to overcome multiple recessions and his advice for helping your business to do the same. If you’re currently planning your personal or corporate goals for 2021 and want to know what you can do to take your career or your business to the next level, or simply the steps you should take to ensure your business comes out of the other side of the recession as stable as possible, then I know you’re going to get so much from what Simon shares in today’s conversation. You can get in touch with Simon at – https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonjw/ Or – [email protected] Visit DMW Group at – https://www.dmwgroup.com/ Visit his website at – https://www.peakflow.zone/ Specific things we discussed in the show: Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice by Matthew Syed – https://amzn.to/2LrbXQX Black Box Thinking: Marginal Gains and the Secrets of High by Matthew Syed – https://amzn.to/35ymsJo Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi

Om Podcasten

As a management consultant myself I’ve always been lucky to have mentors who have guided me through my career. When I was in house I regularly had quality time with Senior Partners that helped me rapidly accelerate my career and has continued to help since I’ve gone out on my own. While I had this great resource and knowledge bank to draw on I know many friends in Consulting aren’t as lucky with some only speaking with senior partners on a monthly or quarterly basis. That’s why I created this podcast. I wanted to help people like you who want to accelerate their careers in consulting by interviewing leaders in the field to share the advice, tips and strategies that they used to get to the top so that you can to so that you can too. In each Episode I’ll be interviewing a senior figure in the industry so that you can learn from them. We’ll be going deep in to their background, how they succeeded and what their advice would be for you. This podcast is brought to you by Create Engage the Digital Marketing agency for the disruptive Management Consultancy. Digital Marketing has moved forward, but most consulting firms haven’t. Many Consulting firms still see their corporate blog as their sole Digital Marketing channel and find themselves frustrated when these blogs yield little if any results. To help those of you who want to harness the power of Digital Marketing to grow your Consulting Business but don’t have the knowledge, capacity or in-house capability to do so I launched Create Engage, the first Digital Marketing agency for the Management Consulting Industry. If you’d like to find out more about how Create Engage can help you use Digital Marketing to take your business to the next level then drop me an email at [email protected] or go to our website www.createengage.co.uk where you can download our free case study that breaks down down the Digital Marketing strategies used by one successful Consulting firm to help them grow over 400% in just 3 years and gives you the secrets they used, so that you can apply them in your own firm.