In Episode 44 of the Leaders & Founders podcast, David Ferguson, CEO of Seccl, shares his exceptional career journey and professional recommendations. Here are five key takeaways from his insightful conversation:

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1. If you believe you can do something better, then do it.

This was David’s response when asked why he focused on disruptive businesses. It has worked well for him having successfully founded and sold Nucleus Financial, and now leading the team at Seccl. But it goes a lot deeper than just showing archaic banks how they can improve. We all have moments where we follow a process or use a service and think it is pretty rubbish, most of us have problem complained about it in our heads or out loud. Why not do something about it.

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2. Hiring is hard, so make it worthwhile.

Hiring for talented people to join your business is tough, you will have more applicants than ever before, companies still compete for the top talent. If you are going to go through this timely process make it worthwhile. Don’t just hire for the job they will do in the next 6 months, have a clear idea of what the role and company will look like in 3-5 years time and make sure they align with this. Otherwise you will end up repeating the hiring process more than you need to.

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3. Data is like gold.

Businesses that scale quickly and successfully can make it look like art, a beautiful flowing process that just kind of happens. But the reality is it is more of a science. You need to understand how growth impacts hiring across different sections of your business and product. If you increase usage of your one part of your product by 20% how many more people do you need to hire. Businesses still need to be agile and be able to adapt, but you should have a clear plan of where you will be in 3 years and how you will get there.

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4. Choose the right investors.

Money has been hard to come by in the last few years given macroeconomic conditions. Don’t let that be the reason your business fails because you just take money from whoever will offer it. Your investors need to be onboard with your growth plan and timescales. If you can’t have clear and honest conversations about this from the start it should be a very big red flag.

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5. Just because it’s right now doesn’t mean it will be right forever.

This was part of the discussion around choosing the right investors but I think it is applicable to wider areas of business growth. Whether investors, partners, sometimes even employees in certain roles. Just because they have got you from A to B, doesn’t mean they are the right people to take you from B to C.

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For a deeper dive into David Ferguson's insights and experiences, you can watch the full episode 🎧

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