Do what you love and you never have to go to work.

I find that writing from the heart always runs the risk of becoming a string of clichés as you want to make it as powerful as possible.

When Tim and I left cushy corporate life to found DLA we did it because we wanted to make a difference to companies and, more importantly, the individuals within that we worked with. 

Social media has changed the face of the world. It has changed how we learn things, how we make decisions, how we make new friends and how we stay in touch with old ones. It has fundamentally changed every element of our lives but, despite this, the overwhelming number of companies we interacted with didn’t see what this meant for them, they didn’t see how they needed to empower their employees and they tried to apply “old thinking” to social media rather than new thinking. Tim and I thought we could change this.

So, as we started to work for organisations we learned (quickly) that simply explaining why someone needs to do something and showing them how to do it rarely gets the change that the organisation (or the individual) wants which is why almost all social media training fails.

Time and again we heard “we’re all over social media…we have it nailed.” But further examination simply showed this wasn’t true - posts on the company page liked by some employees neither created revenue nor spread the message and the constant reshaping of corporate content turned what may have been an "okay" message in to spam. This lack of understanding of how to actually move the needle and a lack of buy-in from the senior team meant that it was never going to work for them.

When you boil it down to the basics though, executing a social media change that gets results requires time and a lot of work…it is REALLY hard work. Often organisations don’t understand why they should invest this effort. However, the effort is definitely worth it.

Typically, when an organisation starts to gain traction each year we would expect the salespeople to generate an average of ￡500k- ￡1m in pipeline and in excess of 200,000 views of their content per person as well as creating some fantastically targeted content that really engages the people that they wish to talk to.

This is making a difference, and it’s what we have always wanted to do. 

Ironically though, whilst we can measure the success in pipeline and revenue, and we can measure the success in terms of the amount of content that’s created, and we can measure the success in terms of how many views we have had on content, and we can measure the amount of engagement those view have generated the most important thing for us at a personal level isn’t the hard facts…it’s the soft stuff.

We get to forge close and lasting friendships with the people we mentor because they are going on a journey (just like we did) and they are learning about themselves (just like we did) and they are embracing their own strengths and weaknesses (just like we did) and because they realise that, when all is said and done, that “who they are” is the most attractive thing they have to offer…and that is enough.

So, what I love most about what I do is what I share with the people I work with - the laughter, the tears, the elation and the disappointment but I like to think that they feel more complete and more contented with who they are as a result of having gone through the process and being just a tiny part of that journey and watching them grow and blossom is enough for me.

So I am in the privileged position that I don’t ever have to go to work because this is my calling.