Author: Martin Port

I’ve had two issues last month that have taught me a lot about the weird and wonderful world of social media.

My first shock came last week, when I spotted a post from a colleague on LinkedIn. To spare everyone’s blushes, I won’t give too much detail but it contained an expletive, and tackled a controversial theme, referencing both me and BigChange by name.

The second post was also on LinkedIn. This one was published by a valued salesperson, who was frustrated after several appointments had been cancelled. This individual was asking if anyone wanted a last-minute meeting, and gave specific times when they were free.

Neither of these were major issues. They weren’t defaming the business. There were no sexist or racist comments. There was no nudity. Yet they both worried me, and I asked for both to be deleted.

Social media can be a brand wrecker, and I haven’t spent five years building a business I love to see its reputation tarnished by a thoughtless remark. The first post contained a swear word, which could really put off some of our clients. It was also being purposefully controversial, in a bid to get more views. That’s fine, but it wasn’t BigChange’s battle to fight, and as I hadn’t been asked permission, I was deeply unhappy about it.

The second post made us look like some small, flighty outfit just at a time when we are looking to win enterprise clients. August is always a tricky time because so many people go on holiday, but salespeople should never moan publicly about that, or tout for appointments: it just looks desperate.

I don’t monitor my employees on social media, and never will. It’s not my business what they post about their private lives – unless they reference BigChange or circumstances related to their employment. You just trust that people will use common sense, don’t you?

I’ve started questioning myself too. I recently posted about Love Island on LinkedIn – who I would hire from the show. It was a light-hearted commentary on a topical issue but again, I have to ask myself, does it show BigChange in a frivolous light?

This has all been a major wake-up call. I have enlisted the help of my employment lawyer Richard Parr from Blacks to change our terms and conditions to ensure that social media concerns don’t keep me up at night.

We now have an eight-page document that outlines what we expect from our people. It’s all pretty straight forward: no defamation, no bullying or harassment, no misuse of company information, and nothing that could damage our reputation. But having a document like this protects both BigChange and the employees, because we all know where we stand.

A few years ago I met a man called Gerald Ratner at a health farm. He became famous after calling the jewellery sold by the Ratner Group “total crap” at an Institute of Directors conference. After the speech, the value of the Ratner group plummeted by around £500m. This was back in 1991 but imagine how much faster a faux pas can spread on social media today.

I feel like we’ve just had a watershed moment at BigChange, and luckily, we’ve acted fast enough to prevent doing a Ratner ourselves.

Martin Port
Founder & CEO

We’ve just moved office – BigChange’s third move in five years.

Each time has been more painful and expensive than the last but this latest relocation – a stone’s throw from our last site – is more than just a new address. It’s a new chapter for BigChange.

We’ve invested in a lot more space, giving us the room to grow from 80 people to 150. The building is bright, painted white, and tastefully decorated. It’s the kind of place I’d been happy to invite any customer – from a small business owner to the chief executive of a FTSE 100 company.

In total, I’ve spent nearly £250,000 on this move, which has taken about three months to arrange. Having survived this hugely stressful process – which is second only to moving house – I thought I’d share a few lessons that I’ve learned along the way.

Negotiate your heart out

If you are signing a five-year lease, you should be able to negotiate for 20pc off the rental price. This will cover all the money you’ll spend on the fit out and relocating all your employees and IT. I think this is pretty standard, and most landlords are willing to offer this as a rent-free period at the start of the lease.

Call the council

When you are moving office, you could be entitled to a rates holiday of up to six months. We have now vacated our last building, although we still own the lease till January. So we called the council and took advantage of the rates break, which means we’re slashing that overhead by half. We’re also deferring rates on the new building until we’re fully moved in, which will be towards the end of September.

Never commit for more than five years

There are two reasons to avoid long-term leases. First of all, you don’t know how quickly your company could grow over the next few years. Five years is probably the maximum you can plan for with any accuracy. Also, a long lease is a liability that weighs down on your business. If you want to raise or borrow money, a 10-year lease could make you less attractive to backers.

Invest in great chairs – but buy second-hand

I want my people to feel comfortable at work. It’s important to me that feel their best. That’s why I decided to buy in top-of-the-range Herman Miller chairs to ensure that everyone is sitting comfortably at their desks. But these chairs are not cheap… they can cost £1,000 a pop. This is why we found a company to source them second-hand, slashing the cost by at least 75%.

Consistency looks professional

We have created an open-plan office here, which means all our desks are on show. We’ve invested in new desktops for the whole team but used the same second-hand sourcing partner to get the bases for us. An added bonus: these desks are adjustable so that my colleagues can choose whether to sit or stand.

Create a space that works for you

The new office has been crafted around the needs of our people. It is open plan but has secluded pods for when individuals want to call customers without being distracted. We have bought in two amazing coffee machines, and created a chill-out area, which feels a bit like our own Starbucks. We have also invested in frosted windows. We’re on the ground floor and the new rules around GDPR mean that we have to ensure there is no way passers-by could glean customer data through our windows.

Remember to budget properly

We opted for a move that was about half turnkey solution – managed by the landlord – and half sorted by us. It was the best way to ensure that the office looked and felt exactly as we wanted it to. About a quarter of our budget went on technology – sorting out the internet, installing the right cables etc. Another quarter went on desks and furniture. A quarter went on partitioning and painting the walls. The final quarter was spent on presentation, everything from the signage to our video wall, which will be used for demonstrations. A local artist, created our signage. It’s cool but understated and we love it.

Stagger your move

We didn’t try and move everyone to the new office overnight. We moved one department at a time, starting with the teams that have the least direct contact with customers. It was incredibly important to me that BigChange’s day-to-day business was not disrupted by this move. By the time we moved our customer service team, we knew there were no glitches, the wifi was up and running, which meant there was a seamless transition.

We’re all moved in to the new premises now, so why not stop by for a coffee and a look around? We’d love to see you.

Martin Port
Founder & CEO

I’d like to share a little secret with you. Every five years, I do this one thing, which helps me to maintain the growth and success of my business.

I started doing it at my last company, Masternaut, which became Europe’s largest vehicle tracking company, and I’ve just done it at my latest venture, BigChange.

I call this process the “360”. It involves taking a comprehensive look at the health of your company.

I can’t stress enough how transformational this simple exercise has been for me, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Any entrepreneur who wants to truly understand their business, their customers, their employees, and realise their aspirations, needs to do this.

So, where do you start?

The exercise usually takes me about four weeks, from start to finish. I tend to work with an external agency – you could pay anything between £5,000 to £100,000+ for this kind of brand overhaul, dependant on your business size. I feel it’s well worth it, as this investment generates a minimum of five years’ worth of benefit.

You also need to prepare for the 360 in advance. At BigChange, we collect a lot of data and customer feedback, which means we have a lot of information to work with. If you want your 360 to be effective, you need this kind of data too.

For example, we ask every customer for their thoughts on BigChange at least once a year. You shouldn’t ask too many questions – we don’t expect clients to waste an afternoon on this. We just stick to four things: What product did you use before? Why did you choose us? What benefits do we bring to your business? How could we improve?

It takes them five minutes but helps add a lot of context to the 360.

Next, you need to assemble an internal team. Usually, these are people from every department in the company. You (or your agency) hold briefing sessions with these people and talk about the following:

Where you’ve come from

Where you want to be (in the next five years and shorter term)

Latest growth figures

The challenges you face

How to overcome those challenges.

The aim is to then distil all these conversations down into some key learnings. These are:

The Vision – The ultimate ambition for your business

Our Big Vision – Making every economy we work in stronger through innovation and world-class service.

The Mission – Your purpose and reason for being

Our Big Mission – To liberate businesses from paperwork and plate spinning so that they are free to do what they do best – and grow stronger.

The Promise – And expression of what your company stands for

BigChange Promise – Make a Big Difference

The Pillars – The pillars that deliver your promise and the foundation for your mission.

We have five pillars at BigChange – including: Being Big on Service, Big on Innovation, Big on being dynamic, Big on determination and Be the big difference – but you can have as many as you like.

This information is all crucial. It will help influence your marketing, the budgets you give to different departments, your areas of specialism and focus, and will provide a hard target to aim for over the coming years.

The process has helped reassure me that we’re on track to become a £100m plus company in five years. I now have this incredible document which helps focus everyone’s minds on the task ahead.

You probably use a SatNav or navigation app in your car. The 360 is a navigation tool for your business. It’s benefitted my business, and I hope it helps you find the right road to where you’re going.

All the best

Martin Port
Founder & CEO

Ask my wife if I should be giving time management tips, and she will probably laugh.

Here I am, a man who still types all his emails with just one finger. She jokes that I run my whole business with that finger – and she’s not wrong. But over the years I have learned some productivity tricks that help me be a much better businessman – even if I’ll always be slow at one or two things…

I get up at the crack of dawn each day. It means I’m up and productive at least two or three hours before most people. Don’t get straight on the laptop – take your time. I actually take at least an hour to get ready in the morning. This isn’t as terrible as it sounds; I do some of my best strategic thinking with a spoon of porridge in one hand and my phone in the other. This is one of the benefits of getting up really early – it’s quiet and calm and you can think in peace. I’m usually at the office with a clear inbox by 8.30am.

Cheat at emails

I’m dyslexic so writing emails can be a struggle. I can spend a long time using spell-check and a thesaurus to get messages just right – but automatic corrections can result in more errors than they solve. So these days I let Google do the heavy lifting. You can search for readymade messages online. I lift paragraphs and then just have to edit them slightly to make them work for you. It’s an amazing timesaver.

Be brutal with meetings

Every meeting must have an agenda, clearly stating what outcome we are trying to achieve, and listing the topics we need to cover. This helps keep everyone on track. I’m also getting better at knowing which meetings I actually need to attend – once you have your ego in check, you realise you don’t need to be present for everything. I find that whenever I’m called away for something urgent, and all my meetings have to be moved or cancelled, I know pretty quickly which ones need me and which ones I can remove from my schedule entirely. Sometimes I arrange meetings, turn up just to make sure everyone else is there, and then leave them to it. When you’re running a business, it’s important to be ruthless with your time when you can.

Hack your inbox

I use Outlook and have a system in place, which sorts my email into conversations. This means that my long list of unread messages is grouped by subject line. So even though I may have 200 new emails, they come up as just 15 conversations, which is much more manageable. Any email I need to keep an eye on is given a red flag, which means it’s easy to sort the urgent ones from the low-priority. Unlike many business owners who will limit the time they spend on email, I’m on it all the time. I have no attention span, so you’ll find me sneaking a look at my inbox during meetings or when I’m with my family. But that level of obsession has helped me grow my business – I know what’s going on with my business every moment of every day. I think you need that level of focus to be successful when your company is young and growing fast.

Find thinking time every day

I don’t drive and I travel two or three days a week, so I get a lot of thinking time on train journeys. I absolutely love it. I’m dreading the arrival of HS2, which could slash my thinking time by half. Growing a business is like climbing a flight of stairs. Each year, you ascend another step. Gradually, you get higher and higher, which means you can look back, and see where you’ve come from more clearly. This is when you really need your thinking time, to assess what you’ve done well – and badly – and plan for the next step.

I hope you’ve found these tips helpful. I certainly have… Writing this post has made me realise I need to take a typing course. It’s never too late to start using all 10 fingers! I’d also love to hear your time management tips, so please leave a comment below and help me to keep on learning.

All the best

Martin Port
Founder & CEO

Every year, I read articles claiming to know the best place to start a business in the UK.

The same old cities always get a mention. London. Bristol. Cambridge. Edinburgh. Today, I’m here to tell these researchers they’re wrong. It’s Leeds.

Five years ago, I founded BigChange. It’s my second tech start-up based out of the city. I knew this was the best place to do it, because I’d seen the benefits growing my last business, Masternaut, here. In fact, I couldn’t envision building a company anywhere else.

The city is home to the most incredible and diverse workforce in the UK. They come from our top universities, or are trained up by all the ambitious companies based here. Whether we’re recruiting for back office, commercial, technical or marketing employees, we’ve never struggled to find great candidates.

When building a team, you want as many different kinds of people on board as possible. Every perspective or experience helps to build a better product for your customers. Leeds is a cosmopolitan, vibrant city; this is not something that’s unique to London.

People here are happier than those in the capital. Their wages go further each month, and there is such quality of life here. You need to earn a minimum of £30,000 a year to live in London, and have any spending money left over after rent and bills. You’ll probably have to share with others though.

In Leeds, you can have your own flat for that money, plus have money to spend on fun things and save. My colleagues all live in neighbourhoods they like, and feel that everything is within their grasp. Those that like the city life have their choice of restaurants, bars, cinemas, music venues, shops and stuff to do. We even have our version of Greenwich Village it’s called Chapel Allerton. Those that want a quieter life can live in the countryside, and yet Leeds city centre is just a 20-minute drive away.

A few members of my team have spent time in London. They lasted about five years before coming back here. They saw that the grass wasn’t greener after all. It’s easy to burn out in London, especially for younger people. You feel compelled to go out and be seen to be living a certain kind of life, which involves burning the cash.

I can’t even moan about our infrastructure. Leeds Bradford airport may be small but I love how quickly you get on and off the plane. Trains take a couple of hours to London but it’s time that I really value. I clear my inbox or spend the time doing some creative planning. I’m not a fan of HS2 – it will be too expensive and cut into my valuable thinking time.

The only downside to Leeds is the football club. But let’s not talk about that.

Some incredible businesses have started life in Leeds. From M&S, which was founded in the city back in 1884, to Next, which began as a tailoring company in Leeds in 1864, to supermarket giant Asda, this place has been the launch pad for many bold and successful entrepreneurs. It is now the second-largest financial powerhouse in the UK, second only to London. And the tech scene here is thriving. Who needs Silicon Roundabout when you have Future Labs?

I love being a West Yorkshire entrepreneur building a business that employs people in the local area. But I don’t just do it because it feels good, I do it because Leeds is the best place to find great people, have a great life, and build a world-beating business. My last business ended up employing 500 people, which is something I’m really proud of. With BigChange, I hope to create something even bigger.

All the best

Martin Port
Founder & CEO