Season 9 | Ep34 Mathew Gollop: 7 to 85 People, a Near Collapse, and the Free Idea That Paid Him Back

But let's just go back to the growth then.

So what was your role in the business in Hong Kong at the point of opening up new offices? What were you actually doing all day?

So I was MD, obviously managing the teams directly.

So we had leaders of teams reporting through to me.

I ran the back office and all the operations.

And then I also build as well.

So obviously that became harder as we started to scale out the other offices.

But I've always kept some revenue in every year.

And I'm often building new pieces.

So industries we're not in, growth markets that are perhaps sort of trending upwards that I can jump onto.

And then recruiting for Hong Kong and for the other offices as well.

So when you spot an opportunity then, because I once, obviously a long time ago, I went to an event and the guy speaking, Russell Clements from S3, and he said, It's such a sexy thing to have international offices, but one office does not double the complexity of your business.

It says it 10Xs.

The second office from the first HQ can 10X the complexity of your business.

Now, you got to the point where you had five.

Talk me through the difference of running a business locally in Hong Kong with 20, 30 people and then this expanding, obviously majority is in the Middle East and Far East, but still completely different countries from Dubai to China to Singapore.

Like they're all different.

Can you give us some of the specific challenges that come with that kind of complexity and what the differences were?

Yeah, I think there's two sort of main ones.

I think the first one is that you assume you can replicate the culture.

You bring people on boards who, buy into the dream.

They understand the values.

And we did hire some good senior leadership, but they hadn't grown up in the core business.

And so the sense of ownership and detachment when you weren't there was a real thing.

And so the culture got replicated, but not always in exactly the same way.

But let's just go back to the growth then.

So what was your role in the business in Hong Kong at the point of opening up new offices? What were you actually doing all day?

So I was MD, obviously managing the teams directly.

So we had leaders of teams reporting through to me.

I ran the back office and all the operations.

And then I also build as well.

So obviously that became harder as we started to scale out the other offices.

But I've always kept some revenue in every year.

And I'm often building new pieces.

So industries we're not in, growth markets that are perhaps sort of trending upwards that I can jump onto.

And then recruiting for Hong Kong and for the other offices as well.

So when you spot an opportunity then, because I once, obviously a long time ago, I went to an event and the guy speaking, Russell Clements from S3, and he said, It's such a sexy thing to have international offices, but one office does not double the complexity of your business.

It says it 10Xs.

The second office from the first HQ can 10X the complexity of your business.

Now, you got to the point where you had five.

Talk me through the difference of running a business locally in Hong Kong with 20, 30 people and then this expanding, obviously majority is in the Middle East and Far East, but still completely different countries from Dubai to China to Singapore.

Like they're all different.

Can you give us some of the specific challenges that come with that kind of complexity and what the differences were?

Yeah, I think there's two sort of main ones.

I think the first one is that you assume you can replicate the culture.

You bring people on boards who, buy into the dream.

They understand the values.

And we did hire some good senior leadership, but they hadn't grown up in the core business.

And so the sense of ownership and detachment when you weren't there was a real thing.

And so the culture got replicated, but not always in exactly the same way.