Alex Thompson used programme to gain insight after change at his company
Create Growth has helped almost 100 creative companies in East Midlands
Department of Media Culture and Sport funded scheme has now been extended
“We’ve gone through a big change in the last year and we wanted to think about the business differently.”
Alex Thompson and his co-director at Troubador Publishing completed a management buyout of the company last year.
Taking over the family firm was the trigger for Alex to enrol on Create Growth.
“After such a big change we wanted to see if there were things we needed to do differently and on some level validate what we are already doing.
“There are aspects of the business that I’m fairly confident with like finance and marketing but then other areas, for example HR, I have less experience in.
“The workshops were great when it came to that.”
Despite being more established than others in the same cohort, Alex found the experience beneficial.
“I think certainly in the group I was in there were a lot of people with a lot of different reasons for being there. My reason was certainly quite different from a lot of others but I think everybody got enough out of it to justify and then some.
“I came away feeling like it was well worth my time.”
Troubador works with hundreds of authors publishing their books. Offering different service levels, the team of about 30 work across all disciplines of publishing.
The company’s plan for its next period is to consolidate.
“We grew a large amount last year and we’re working with more authors than ever before.
“After the buyout we want to get to the end of the first year feeling like we’re still in a really good place.”
For Alex, being paired with a mentor with experience of management buyout was one of the most beneficial aspects of the programme.
“Our mentor was chosen for us because he’d created and sold businesses himself, as well as joining them to take over in a buyout.
“Sitting with him for a few hours over a couple of sessions and actually just him firing loads and loads and loads of questions at me was a really positive and validating experience.
“The flexibility of that side of the programme has also been really helpful – we’ve saved some of our time with him to use at a later date which is really valuable and shows how committed and genuine the mentors are.”
