I feel an urgent need to make the world better for my children and other kids, especially schools.

Two events in my life changed me profoundly. Being an educator and becoming a father. Although I am not currently teaching, I feel an urgent need to make the world better for my children and other kids, especially schools. This is what drove me to create Mitchell Digital Media Ltd (MDM) in 2020, an organisation aimed at providing creative marketing solutions for the education sector.

I had become jaded with teaching – over a decade, the role had changed considerably. I still wanted to work with schools and with children and still wanted to use my media skills – it seemed like the obvious choice. With the help of a very supportive Headteacher, I identified that schools were vying for the same students in the same catchment areas, but were terrible at marketing themselves – and why would they be any good at it? Their job is to educate!

The truth is that the longer I stayed in education I realised that all I wanted to do was teach, I wasn’t interested in the bureaucracy that plagues the education sector. I initially wanted to use my background in video production to produce wedding videos, but after doing one, quickly realised that this wasn’t my calling. After speaking with my Headteacher and several other school leaders, it was clear that there was a need for someone with the knowledge of the education sector and safeguarding to take over school social media profiles, as well as producing high quality marketing materials at a specific price point, making it accessible for schools. I started with one school and quickly added three more – we’re now at 24 schools and three staff. We anticipate rapid growth over the next year with dozens of schools expressing an interest in what we do.

Since I was a middle leader and school governor, this gave me an insight into how schools operate, as well as being a teacher and understanding how decisions made further up a chain affect the students and teachers on the ground. This was key to winning the trust of schools and being able to deliver high quality content.

It wasn’t easy and still isn’t. The need is huge and now we are responsible for 24 educational institutions and in discussion with many more. I had to take on employees to be able to provide the much needed services we have been contracted to do and will need to take on new, skilled professionals to continue this growth.

My vision for MDM is to become the largest provider of marketing materials for the education sector. It is important to me as we grow to maintain the high standard of work we produce and keep our high-quality customer service. I’d rather keep the business small and maintain these values than grow too big and under deliver. I thrive on the relationships we build with our schools. One Headteacher recently told me that our service is invaluable and the account manager assigned to the school “had become part of the furniture”.

This is why I joined the Future Smiths. I wanted to see how to control the growth of my company so that it is representative of my values but in the same time does not take over my life. Mine is a success story. It has taught me not to be afraid to change path, even after a decade of working in a field and find your passion. I also learned that leadership is both a responsibility and a privilege and that managing others is hard and one needs to create structures and manage expectations constantly. I feel I have the tools to take my organisation to the next level and grow with it personally and professional as it thrives.