Avado’s client and partner Digital Greenhouse Director Lucy Ann Kirby in Business Brief

Every person behind a successful business will tell you about the importance of having the right team or people by your side.  Steve Jobs had Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne to help him start, Bill Gates had Paul Allen.  Now, more than ever, it is important to think about how you can access the support you and your team need when starting or scaling a business.

Over the last year, the Digital Greenhouse has seen the upsurge of local startups taking the reins and making their first steps from idea to reality.  Months down the line, these startups are growing, taking the building blocks from joining a DGH business bootcamp, through to launching into successful companies. So what is the next step?

As a business grows, new challenges and issues arise.  Maybe it’s how to access new customers, or break out of the Island into new markets, gain funding, or build a high performing team.  These are the kinds of challenges we see both new and scaling businesses tackling every day.  It takes expertise and insight to develop, scale, refine or expand your product offering, pitch for investment, or define the go-to-market strategy.  This is where business mentoring comes in.

Gaining that much needed sounding board and building a relationship with a fellow entrepreneur who has ‘been there and done that,’ provides much needed support at all stages of business development.  Whilst advice can come from many avenues and there is a steady flow of information out there across online publications, events and networking, accessing a trusted, experienced mentor is a hugely valuable step.

Here at the Digital Greenhouse, we have been working with venture builders Blenheim Chalcot to provide these business mentoring support services.  With a 20-year history of building successful digital products and services, their teams have amassed a wealth of knowledge to supercharge businesses, helping them to scale at speed. Access to expertise and leadership support is consistently listed as one of the top challenges faced by Executives and the mentors on the programme all have hands-on experience in starting and scaling tech and digital businesses and cover a breadth of subject matter areas, including product, investment, leadership and finance (among others).

Building your capability, alongside your team is essential to business growth and success.  Mentoring will support you with advice and an expert soundboard on direction and strategy, but building high performing teams needs recognition that now more than ever, for all sectors, upskilling is an essential part of any business plan.

In an evermore digitised world, are you preparing your leadership team for digital transformation and success?  Launched last year, Guernsey’s Digital and Agile Leadership Bootcamps, with our digital learning partner Avado Learning, is a good starting point.  With over 50 business leaders already undertaking the course, it is designed to open minds, challenge thinking, and bring to life key principles that sit at the heart of how to lead teams and organisations in the digital era. The workshops look at how to apply key principles and practices that sit at the centre of agile and digital-native ways of working, how to design customer-centric digital products and services and create an environment that enables fast learning at scale.

Fully funded to Guernsey businesses as part of the SMART Guernsey Programme powered by Agilisys Guernsey, there has never been a better time to upskill and develop your teams and find the expert mentorship that you need to accelerate your ventures.

The next Digital & Agile Leadership Bootcamps will take place on the 29^th and 30^th September 2021.  To find out more about how your business can upskill, grow and innovate, visit digitalgreenhouse.gg or email info@digitalgreenhouse.gg.