4,000 and counting…
Last week we welcomed to our linkedin community the four thousandth guest and we would like to stop a moment to reflect on this outcome. Which is not a target really – no celebrations then – because it wasn’t really an objective to start with, but for a small yet ambitious company like ours such outreach still means to have hit a milestone, because we know that above this threshold the competition…just belongs to a different weight class, and boy if we’ve been loving to punch above our weight and succeed!
As E.S.G. Solutions is about to complete its fourth year of continuous trading since our founder decided that the time was right to launch a boutique consultancy in London specialised in technical ESG matters, the maths behind these figures is pretty simple: more than 1,000 new connections per annum (net), with the growth in followers reflecting similar improvement pathways in the company’s turnover, client base, diversification of services and also geographies covered by our team of in-house consultants and trusted contractors all around the world.
We have asked Antonio what is bringing three new professionals every day to follow us, to read our blog articles and to engage (organic impressions may be the correct term) with the company’s announcements that we try to regularly post on our preferred – well, the only one we’ve got really – social channel, considering that we’re a truly independent firm that simply relies on its cash flow to organically and sustainably grow its market share and historically has always invested more in staff training than marketing i.e. business development through people development. Some suggestions sprang to mind e.g. the depth of our industry insights, the value of our legislative updates about the energy and carbon compliance agenda, how exceptional some of our ESG case studies have been over the years, taking GRESB clients to global leader status, the happy photos of our employees and clients from our site inspections and networking events, maybe our initiatives to support our staff in and out of the office (quite literally)?
The truth is…sometimes things just work out well. I like to think that people like our authenticity and outside-the-box approach to problem solving in one of the most thriving and competitive industry globally. A bit like Yusuf Dikeç at the recent Olympics, I am a strong believer in keeping things simple and let competence talk. I have tried to put into my last business venture a combination of passion, dedication, ingenuity, professionalism, some well-thought risks, my two decades of international work experience and – with a lot of so-much-needed luck and a bit of personal touch – here we are, talking about a winning business model entirely built around enthusiastic people around me. Socials weren’t on my radar to be honest and my idea of “a People’s business” (our tagline) was very much focused on enhancing personal interactions and build strong relationships with other human beings based essentially on reciprocal trust.
I must admit, since Day 1, I’ve just been feeling blessed to be able to crack on with the job that I love and to make positive impacts through E.S.G. Solutions. Don’t get me wrong here: by no means the journey has been a stroll in the park, going constantly from very intense periods to much more intense ones! You have heard about some of the successful exploits of the last four years in our blog articles, but what you may not know are the challenging situations that had to be addressed and the lessons learned, which in the end are those that truly allowed us to grow stronger and get to the next stages of the company’s development. When we lose, we try to not lose the lesson basically. In fact, thinking about these exact words, let me share with our readers how the recent feedback from a candidate that I had to turn down simply because their profile didn’t match certain specific job requirements became a source of extra motivation and inspiration to keep going, keep pushing boundaries, keep innovating the traditional business approach, still remaining loyal to our core values. After all, “cash is king” was the first lesson that I learned during my CBRE years in the 2000s and our steady yet conscious growth plan doesn’t allow me to hire all the pool of talent that regularly approaches me for a position at E.S.G. Solutions. Which sometimes is a real shame, especially this one in particular who reminded me of the exact purpose behind which the company was established, leaving nothing else to add really:
