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How Adam Seaton Built a 50-Person Consultancy from a One-Man Band · The Catch Up Podcast

• [00:00:00] Phillip Blackmore: My name is Phillip Blackmore, the Sales Director at Catch Group, and today on the Catch Up Podcast, I'm joined by Adam Seaton. [00:00:08] Adam Seaton: It was one of those dollar moments in my career where I was, I'd just got married and got an email from somebody that said, interested in you. Turned out that was in Bahrain. Opportunity presents itself and you take the plunge. It was feast and famine. I got lucky. And what that turned into was Adam being a one man band, and three months later having a 2.1 million pound contract on the table. I remember signing the biggest NDA of my life. It was like this. There was another little thing going on at the time we might remember called Covid. [00:00:34] Phillip Blackmore: Yes. [00:00:35] Adam Seaton: So you know, we've got 40 plus staff, we've got three projects about to kick off. It's looking like a brilliant year. A week later, everyone's working at home. You do take a step back, I think many people do in their career, and you say, yeah, there's other things in play that are more important than what I'm doing right now. [00:00:52] Phillip Blackmore: I've known Adam for well over 10 years from his early days as a Dynamics AX contractor to setting up Seaton & Partners all the way through to his sale and exit there. Current day with him working and running Team Joe. Thank you, Adam. How are you? [00:01:09] Adam Seaton: Good morning, Phil. Good to see you. Yes, very well thank you. [00:01:11] Phillip Blackmore: I think it's an interesting opportunity to go back to that early career and how you really first got into the Microsoft Dynamics market. If you could tell us a little bit about that role and the role that you were performing with that organization at that time. [00:01:25] Adam Seaton: Yeah, if we go back the full way. It's back to the late nineties if you can believe. We've been in the game that long and I first met the dynamic space with a lovely little product called Division Financials, which I think was in version 1.1, 1.3 at the time. One of those early adopters in the Windows ErP space, and I became a big fan of that product. That's really what got me into the game. I was working in an engineering company at the time, and it's one of those appointments where everybody was engineers and nobody was IT and I was sort of fresh out of college and I was only one that knew which end of a computer was which and so that project naturally fell on my desk. We were subject to millennium bug issues, if you can remember the word, millennium and bug back in those days. So we knew we had to do something and Division Financials was the new kid on the block and we, went for that. I got the gig of implementing it in the business and that started the journey. That's where it all began. [00:02:11] Phillip Blackmore: Wow, brilliant. That's fascinating. When you think back all of those years, I mean, I remember when I first got into the space when it was sort of Dam Guard. It became Exacpter when Microsoft then bought it. But it, gives you that real sort of vision in terms of when it brings you up to the modern day product to see how it's scaled and how it's developed. It's, been a fascinating journey, it really has. [00:02:30] Adam Seaton: I think a lot of people forget that history. If your kind of new into the game now over the last five or 10 years, and you've only used the Microsoft world, you forget that. I took my first consulting role at Columbus in the early noughties where Division and Dam Guard merged and we had Division Dam Guard for a while, and then Microsoft stepped in, in, 2003? Something like that. I remember everybody coming into the office, have you heard the news? It's like we trying to work out, it was good or bad that Microsoft was getting involved. And yeah, we forget that lines of code in the product we have now that looks so different. It still has its DNA back there and back into the late nineties and early nineties and the products that existed right then. Yeah, it has a long history. [00:03:04] Phillip Blackmore: And how did you make that transition, Adam, then from the role that you were doing with your original firm into Columbus, was that a role that you applied for? Was that something you were approached about going to do? How did you make that contact with Columbus? [00:03:17] Adam Seaton: You still see this right now where people are involved in projects in IT and they realize that they enjoy it. They've got a little propensity for it. It's something that they can get their teeth into and I was working in a role that I probably pushed as far as I could in terms of my administrative role that I was doing in that business, my sort of finance back office type role, and had the full support of the team there when I said I might, take this skill that I've learned internally and take that over to the side of the fence. And so moving into a consultancy role was a fairly natural progression of what we see quite often with people coming out of the other side of project teams and realizing they really enjoy that gig and decided to make that switch. It's not uncommon. It was a pretty vibrant market. The marketplace was quite active, very different to how it is now in terms of contracting and full-time. I mean, the contract market, perhaps you remember, that didn't really exist. Certainly not in the UK. Maybe on the continent a little bit. The thought of going contracting in the UK in the early naughties, it it just didn't happen. [00:04:07] Phillip Blackmore: It didn't exist. No. [00:04:08] Adam Seaton: Yeah, you went for a full-time role with a partner, if that's the game that you wanted to be in, and I decided that was a career path I could pursue, and I, I quite enjoyed it. I seemed to understand how the software works. I had a nice background in financials, administration, order processing, a bit of international trade. I kind of had a good head around most business processes that made places tick. So that was a good understanding to take into the consultancy world. And it was a Columbus in that time I cut my teeth if you like, and went and did proper frontline projects for a couple of years. [00:04:34] Phillip Blackmore: Yeah, absolutely. I'm trying to sort of think back in terms of when we first made contact, and I can't remember if it was when you were with Cyber still and were you there as a permanent employee or were you contracting there? I can't remember. [00:04:46] Adam Seaton: It is a bit of a blur if I think back at what happened. I left Columbus to chase a dollar. I have to confess, it was one of those dollar moments in my career where I was, I'd just got married and I got off work on a Nav site actually, and it didn't work out. And long story short, I took a career break, went to New Zealand with a wife who took a couple of months over there and had some time off and it was while I was in New Zealand. I was on a website and thinking about recruitment, I was thinking about this other day, it was a website and I've been trying to remember the name of it and I can't, but it was one of the early, put your CV here and employers will come on and filter through. [00:05:16] Phillip Blackmore: Right. Wow. [00:05:16] Adam Seaton: That wasn't a new thing back there, but it was new that it was a site dedicated to dynamics. So I was putting this I do general ledger. I'm a four out of five in this. I'm a three out of five in that module, [00:05:25] Phillip Blackmore: Oh, brilliant. [00:05:26] Adam Seaton: I can't remember who organized that and it sort of drifted away now. But anyway, my CV was on that site, and while I was in New Zealand, I got an email from somebody that said, "Interested in you" we had some calls and it turned out that was in Bahrain. It's one of those weird left field things. I had to get the map out to see where it was. Tiny bit island, sort of five miles wide and 20 odd miles long, off the coast of Saudi Arabia and came back from New Zealand. I was four days in the UK and back on the plane to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain for the next 18 months. I guess it's one of those, we don't see it coming, opportunity presents itself and you take the plunge. You roll the dice a little bit and that turned out to be one of the adventures, if you can call it that of that time. And it was, when we came back from there, that contract ended. It was a contract for 18 months. It finished, no further work there, so we sort of repatriated back to the UK and that's you quite right. That's where I dropped in at Cyber and I pretty quickly realized after few months at Cyber, they were a great team by the way, as a great. People work with them. People I still know in the industry from the time I had there. But I quickly realized I wasn't cut out long term for working within the partner world, I thought. It sounds like you're being critical and I don't want it to sound critical that you are on a lot of projects. If you see challenges with those projects and you think well, hang on, you are, lead consultants on those projects, you can fix those things, but there's only so much you can do as an individual when you're working within an industry culture that you don't think quite is quite right. I really challenged myself during that short time when I was back to think could I do it differently? Would I do it differently? How would you do it? And there was a bit of a put up or shut up moment with myself. It was kind of step out and then go and have a crack yourself or keep your head down and carry on, and I think that's when we sort of got introduced around that time and ultimately that ended up my first contract work up at uh, well, I did a little bit with sense with Keith and Mike at Sense and made a good contact with them, and... [00:07:09] Phillip Blackmore: Still going strong today, aren't they? [00:07:11] Adam Seaton: Yep, absolutely. They gave me a bit of work as I first stepped into the contract market, and then my first full assignment came with yourself up at Northgate Vehicle Hire in about 2009, and that was the first time I sort of fully stepped out into a separate world on my own and tried to sort of make that path work. [00:07:24] Phillip Blackmore: And was that part of it in terms of when you talk about that put up or shut up moment. Working within a partner organization, there's only so much autonomy you have within the role that you have there, and I guess the guidance that you can give the customers, was that kind of like the point in which we kind of make that decision think, do you know what I am gonna go contracting? When you were thinking about going contracting, was it quite a nerve-racking move? It was becoming more common then. There wasn't a plethora of contractors at that time. From a career perspective, quite a big jump and how did you feel making that jump? [00:08:00] Adam Seaton: The market was very vibrant then. So if something hit the fan, you could always fall back on a job, and that doesn't seem to sound arrogant. You could always get a job. But there was certainly more jobs going then there were good resources around to fill them at the time. So the risk of stepping out and trying something your own, there was within reason, always a fallback that you could probably find something back in the full paid world if it didn't quite work out. It was never, I want to go contracting to the rest of my life because I don't like working in the hierarchy of a partner. It was, this is a stepping stone to my own partnership. That idea of seeding my own, sort of partner world was the ambition. That was the goal and the contracting was a means to an end to do that. So for example when I did go contracting those years, I only ever did four days a week, and I was very strict about how to do it four days a week and Monday to Thursday was my contract world, and Friday was get on the phone, ring my own contact, build my own website, do my own marketing, do my own thing and that was sort of the balance I had. And four days a week kind of became three days a week, and I got my own little clients and then became two days a week, and then it became, I've got enough work and my own client booked to look after myself now and that's sort of how that transition happened over those couple of years. Took longer than I would've liked mind but the contracting world was always a stepping stone to something else. [00:09:10] Phillip Blackmore: When you're describing the fact that you were that focused in terms of your own mind about that's what you were going contracting for, and I remember when we were speaking about Northgate, that you would only work four days a week, you didn't probably allude to the point that's what you were doing with the other day a week. But it's fascinating that you had that kind of drive and that focus, and I guess that's where kind of lead into that next piece of your journey in terms of going from consultancy to contractor to starting your own practice. You say that was always the plan, and then how did those early days look for you? I mean, when you say it took a little bit longer than you would've liked, I think sometimes these things often do. But when they do happen organically, and they do happen over time. Often I find that there's a greater foundation for success. Sometimes it's that kind of get rich quick. If things happen a little too fast, sometimes it can push people beyond their capabilities. But when it does happen organically, did you find, when you reflect back on it, actually that was no bad thing that, that it took a little bit of time to build the business up? [00:10:12] Adam Seaton: I perhaps didn't perceive it that way at the time because you're doing everything you possibly can to nurture that. But you're probably quite right. It was probably a benefit that it did take longer, at least I knew it was at the right trade, if you like, and the right craft. You've gotta remember we say back then, like it was last century or something, but it wasn't that long ago. [00:10:29] Phillip Blackmore: No, it wasn't. [00:10:30] Adam Seaton: The mission, if you like, wasn't world domination. I never set out thinking I'm gonna sort of take on the likes of the big international partners. The dream was three or four or five people as a little posse, go and do a good project, get a name for that and move on to the next. That was kind of the mission. How do I find a project that's at the right size and right scale where we can do that? And in that time, I suppose we're talking maybe 2009, at that time, couple years later, 2012, you could go and implement that project with 3, 4, 5 people on scope you absolutely could. Very, very difficult now to do that, to scale in that way. But at that time you could, so that was really the mission. How do I find a customer that's a greenfield site, that's got a project that will support 3, 4, 5 of us? I'll sort of be the head of that. Bring in a couple of good guys I enjoyed working with and I was starting to meet those people in that network of people I work with. I met great people like Sanjeev at Northgate. He was always interested in new business projects. You start to meet that people, if you speak to them and talk about your plans, they go, yeah that's nice. I'd like to be a part of that and if you get on that journey, let me know and I'll see if we can partner. I'll come with you, and those relationships build and as you start to put that message out there and build those relationships, it's amazing what opportunities open up for you. If you keep doing a good job on the work you're on and keep pursuing that dream. But it wasn't world domination. That wasn't where we set out to be. [00:11:42] Phillip Blackmore: How Adam, does it start? You're working four days a week as a contractor, you know that goes down to three days. You're spending your extra time, those extra days on sort of starting to build out your sort of capabilities as Seaton Partners. What were those first customer engagements you had? How did those come about? Was it through recommendations? Did you have links into Microsoft? Because obviously some of the larger partner organizations have contacts in with key account managers at Microsoft. So an organization comes along, knocks on Microsoft store and says, we wanna have a look at Microsoft Dynamics and Microsoft go, okay, here's our manufacturing partner of choice or partners of choice, or here's our professional services partners of choice. I guess in those early days did you have an opportunity to be on that radar or is it very much just your own graph and referrals and contacts that you were sourcing and seeking? [00:12:29] Adam Seaton: It was the latter. Yeah. It was our own, it was our own groundwork. I made a few quid contracted one year, put that money into hiring a sales person for a year. That's, we're talking, 2008/9. Charge that sales person said, here's a budget I can afford you for six months. Go and see what you can bring in and six months later we haven't got anything. But what he did do fortunately, was he set some seeds and it was actually one of those deals that came back four or five months later and said, actually, now I'm ready, and that became our first license sale. We sold three users, a three user license. To a company me down in Reading. Hello Nigel, and I pretty much went and did it on my own with a developer subcontractor who helped me do a few bits. So that was customer one. But you put the word out there, you keep doing a good job. You put your website up there, which was pretty much your premium way of advertising yourself. LinkedIn was in its infancy. You had a website, you pay for some Google marketing and some Google AdWords, and that's what you did at the time, and I did that. I did what you should do if you're promoting new startup business. Talked to everybody possibly could in the Black book. And I got lucky. The call came, they were an international business that had a UK implementation. They had been left by the project team and the local team was struggling, and he just said, look, I've got some local issues, some local finance issues, fairly common stuff, things don't reconcile, and so on and so forth. I've been on your website, can you come and help us out? That started with me working four days a week on a contract and then driving up there on the Friday. We built up a relationship with Alan, a guy called Alan Harris, who was a brilliant guy to work with and over a period of three or six months, every Friday, we built up a relationship where I would go and fix a couple of bits. Teach him a bit about how the system worked. He'd do his homework while I was away. The next week you'd have another list of stuff we had to work through and issues to fix. And this repeated itself and it was great fun. It was quite an easy task. All the stuff was in my gift and knowledge how to do so I really enjoyed it. 'Cause I was a bit like the Cape Crusader. You rock up, it's got a big list of problems. [00:14:14] Phillip Blackmore: Yeah! [00:14:14] Adam Seaton: You tick off and you go away and he says, thanks for coming, and in the consultancy world. Someone says thanks for the company, it's been a really good day, is it's not a compliment you get that often. So I really enjoyed working there, and then Alan, to his credit was quite influential in the wider group. He got the ear of the international FD who wanted to carry on rolling out their project in other countries. That that turned into is Alan approach me and say Adam, we get on really well. I've been asked to roll this out for the rest of the world. Will you come and join that project team or will you come implement it with us in the rest of the world? And that was a lucky break. The reality of that was I was, Adam and I had nobody and he wanted to go roll out 15 countries. We had a conversation and that pretty much amounted to, I will, but I needed to go and get a team. Four or five people, as it happened. There was the seed. I thought, this is playing out quite nicely, and he said you go get the team and I'll get you the support from head office and we'll get you the budget. What that turned into was a couple of months of due diligence and planning, but it turned into Adam being a one-man band and three months later having a 2.1 million pound contract on the table. [00:15:15] Phillip Blackmore: Wow. Incredible. [00:15:17] Adam Seaton: That was literally how it happened. And that went from one man band contractor to, okay, now we've got a gig, now we've got a game up and running. That was pretty much zero to, oh my goodness, how are we going to deliver this world pretty much overnight? But Allen and the team at that company were fantastic. They supported us. They knew we were mobilizing resources, should we say and, we ended up with over 15 bodies on that. I think you probably put some contractors in there for as if I've remember rightly. [00:15:38] Phillip Blackmore: I think a few of the permanent staff, we helped you with a few of the contractors. It was exciting to see though, because the relationship, the personal relationship we had, as dealing with you is just, it was Adam Seaton to then it being Seaton Partners to then seeing the growth. When you think about a practice growing like that, what were some of those biggest hurdles that you faced? Because obviously that fundamental piece you talk about there customers, that's where it all starts, isn't it? But beyond that as well, in terms of growing and building a good environment. It'd be just interesting to get your thoughts, Adam, on some of those hurdles that you faced. [00:16:11] Adam Seaton: I don't think I've got much to share that every other person that's ever run a practice would not recognize, to be honest. I don't think my challenges, or solutions, were unique and it was always the same. It was feast and famine. When you've got a team of, let's say we've grown a team of 10 permanent people. They're across two projects, and those two projects finish. It's an art form and a lot of luck to synchronize two new projects that those people can drop off onto and come in and for our sins, if you like, we had a general policy of not using subcontractors. We wanted to build a team of permanent people. We wanted to invest in that team and their training, we wanted them to build into the culture of what we're trying to build and run with for the long term. So we did use some subcontractors from the market in I say emergencies or holiday cover of one or two things, but they never made it more than five or 10% of the workforce. The core of everybody we use as permanent staff, and that was brilliant because everybody bought in. Everybody was very loyal. They bought into the model we were trying to build. The challenge was the feast and famine. We went from we haven't got enough resource to, my God, we've got four people on the bench and that's cost as a fortune and how we're gonna get past the next payday and where's the cash coming from into, oh my goodness, we haven't got enough staff and Phil, could you find me three bodies quickly? And that never stopped. Whether you've got five, 10 or nearly 50 when we, you know, when we exited. That problem never went away, and I don't think unless you've got big numbers and you can manage that scale and manage that project fluidity as a small business where you've got a very small number of high value clients. You're doing 1, 2, 3 projects a year, perhaps crossing over in different synchronisations. Managing resource and the utilization of that resource at a level that makes it sustainable is the single biggest challenge. [00:17:46] Phillip Blackmore: Absolutely, and then when you talk about that resource pool that you had and the hiring, you were very good at building teams. When you look back, what do you think your sort of strategies around hiring and also what do you think made you good at Seaton Partners because you retained talent, I always remember that. When I look at that core team that you had early days, right through to the end. So many of those people were there with you through the full journey, really. So what was it, do you think that you did well at Seaton Partners to retain talent? Because it's such a hard thing to do in a consultancy environment. I mean, we speak to people day in, day out, and retaining top talent, good talent, it's a hard thing to do. Did you have a strategy behind that? [00:18:25] Adam Seaton: It's a really good question, Phil, and we prioritized growth over profit. That was a very conscious thing. We could have profited a bit, there was a point at which perhaps we had 20, 25 staff, we could have sort of iced it at that point. We could have just milked the cow a little bit. We could have increased our margins, our prices. Growth was always the thing. You know, we had visions of a hundred plus people and big turnover plans and five-year plans and all that good stuff, and it was always, take what we've got right now, let's reinvest it. We always hired in anticipation of the work we might have, not the work we did have. We were never reacting to work we had in. We always had capacity. We were always a little bit over capacity and always had some tolerance in the team. We never put consultants out on site five days a week. Nobody in the team ever had a hundred percent utilization. It was just wasn't what we did. We always wanted people to have capacity to do two things, one was react to perhaps previous customers had worked with who might want them back, and always wanted to manage the capacity to learn and take on new technology. One of the big challenges of growing a practice in that time when the technology was moving so fast during that onsite to cloud kind of transition, 2015, 2016. The whole paradigm of how we implement our methodology is the technology, the way we do development, the way we release code, the way we do data migration. The whole world changed around then. [00:19:39] Phillip Blackmore: Selling it how you sell licenses. Yeah, the whole thing changed, didn't it? It was massive. [00:19:43] Adam Seaton: I remember we got an email from Microsoft. We were part of all the alpha and beta programs. We were very invested in early adoption of things, and Andrew Cliff, who's our technical director, he was very keen on pushing all of these early adoption programs. We got, I remember get the email from America saying we'd like to invite you to a pre-show, an alpha viewing, of what became Dynamic 365. This is probably January 2015, maybe 2016 if I'm wrong. But around that time. I remember signing the biggest NDA of my life. It was like this. We put two people on the plane over there and they basically came back and said, if you don't get on board with this, if you don't invest, if we don't skill up on this we're dead. This is the future. This is where it's going. We have to throw everything at this is. It's not negotiable, and that's what we did. So I think that in that investment, in that training, that investment in that learning, the investment in the people. Give them the motivation to sort of hang in on the journey when times are a bit tough and see it through to the side. So yeah, that's probably one of the main things was investing in the talent, investing in the people, giving them time to learn the technology, not saturating them with utilization statistics and not making that the be and end all of everything. And I kind of knew that if we did that at some point it would pay back. I didn't know where that point was. But at some point downstream that would reap its rewards. I think we also just had a, we just hired good people, to be honest, Phil. I remember coming to you earlier, I said, could you get me three people? Will you get me three CVs? We did three interviews and hired three people. [00:21:00] Phillip Blackmore: That's the way do it! [00:21:02] Adam Seaton: It was a pretty good hit rate. Yeah, we just had great team, that early team that came on board with Jeff and Sarah, and obviously now I'm on the podcast, I'm gonna forget all their names now, and that's gonna be embarrassing, [00:21:11] Phillip Blackmore: And then you'll get in trouble. [00:21:12] Adam Seaton: Yeah, and Simon came on board as a consultant later, FD and Andrew came on board as technical director, and the five of us, that was like the core five that started the team. Were just brilliant people, brilliant individuals, and we just got a little bit lucky with those of the recruitment and they turned out to be absolute diamonds and couldn't have done the rest without them. [00:21:28] Phillip Blackmore: It's fascinating, that journey and then you grow the business. If I bring you up to the point in which, where I guess whether it's an exit or a sale. That'd be a really interesting sort of point to cover Adam, because Seaton Partners became acquired by EY. How does that come about? Were you actively or proactively thinking you're taking it to a point where you thought, do you know what? I've worked very hard I'm looking for an exit point here and I'm gonna take a bit of time out as I can imagine, like you say, when you describe the kind of stresses and strains of managing utilization, looking after these staff, investing in your clients, your time, your effort, your energy. I can imagine that saturates the brain quite significantly. Was that something you were proactively seeking to do at that time? [00:22:09] Adam Seaton: That's the only part of your description there that's not right, which is that I wasn't proactively seeking it. But all the other parts you've just mentioned were. There was another little thing going on at the time that you might remember called Covid. [00:22:20] Phillip Blackmore: Yes. [00:22:21] Adam Seaton: Yeah, we're in 2020 we've got 40 plus staff. We've got three projects about to kick off. All the team are looking forward to it. Three pretty much within unison of each other. We've got the order book full for the whole year. It's looking like a brilliant year. A week later, everyone's working at home. [00:22:35] Phillip Blackmore: Wow. [00:22:36] Adam Seaton: Two of those three customers, unfortunately couldn't continue those projects. They pulled the shutters down. One very bravely continued and we worked remotely on it, and we went from a kickoff meeting that should have happened on site on a Monday morning to 20 people on a teams call trying to react. I'm not unique in that everybody did the same. We all reacted, but as a managing director, and I think about people like Gemma our HR director and Simon who were trying to keep hold the finances together when cashflow had just been thrown out the window and two of our three, big projects, you're talking, multi hundreds of thousands of pound projects have just iced. That put lot of pressure on people. Looking back, as a management team, we did a bloody good job during Covid. We honestly reacted pretty well to what was in front of us. There was no rule book. Everyone was listening to the news every night. Everyone was listening to the updates every night. What can we do? What aren't we allowed to do? Can we get back in the office? Personally working from home drove me nuts. I like to be around the team. I need the motivation of the team, the energy of the team, the buzz. Several people were happy, Hey, look, I can work from home. I wasn't one of those. So I was looking at the news, itching to get back in. All things considered, we used everything. We used the VAT deferments, we used the loans. We used the furlough scheme. Unfortunately I didn't want to, but wouldn't have survived if we hadn't. But the nice thing was come September, October time, everybody was back in the office. We got everybody back. We didn't lose a single person and we benefited, or we saw what everybody did in the industry, we saw some bounce in sort of Q3, Q4 after Covid. Where there was a bit of a reaction to it and everybody got that and all of a sudden we're looking for more people, and it was about that time sort of late November, December, 2020. There was a call from somebody I know in the industry who said, may I introduce you to this gentleman who's interested in having a conversation with you? I said, yes. And it turned out that was a call from one of the senior partners in EY and we had a chat and he made clear what their strategy was, and would I be interested in that conversation? I think the timing for them couldn't have been better. The timing for me probably couldn't have been better without sounding too sort of over the top about it. I was physically exhausted from 2020. I was ready for a break. I was ready for a rest. That sort of covid year made, I think business owners stand back and go, okay, what are we really trying to do here? How do we move this forward? What's the next piece look like? Nobody had global pandemic in their five year business plan. But, somehow everybody sort of stumbled through it. You did too, I'm sure and met those challenges along the way. I talked with the directors about it and the other people that had a stakeholder in the business. And it was unanimous that was a good thing to do on many levels, and the real motivation was I needed a rest to be blunt. I was happy to take either, we changed the internal structures and I took a bit of a step back and somebody else sort of stepped up to the hot seat as it were. That was one option. But we all agreed that it was a great way to take the business forward at an accelerated pace in the way that we probably couldn't. We had some very senior people in the business that we didn't really have anywhere for them to go in terms of promotions. We were kind of a bit stuck at the top and we saw some really good talent and we looked at that talent and thought are they gonna shine more here? Or do we open the door and give them an opportunity in a bigger business where there's more opportunities to really accelerate their careers in a bigger organization, and I think that was probably the thing that sealed it. Yes, there was some dollars involved as well, of course, but I wanted a bit of a break and I saw the opportunity for the people that were in the business to accelerate without too much downside to that discussion really. So it turned out to be a relatively easy decision to make. [00:25:50] Phillip Blackmore: How did it feel though, when you kind of look back and you reflect on it, letting a business go that you'd grown from sort of, from ground up. Those people become your friends, and I know you were staying with them because you were moving with them into that EY business. But you know the day you signed that contract and it was kind of all formal and done, what was the kind of emotional reaction you had at that time? [00:26:11] Adam Seaton: I think it was quite neutral, to be honest. That's a very unspectacular answer to a very big question. [00:26:15] Phillip Blackmore: Well, no I guess if you'd kind of almost that you were comfortable with your decision, you've described that you were, that you've kind of got to a point where energy levels were at a certain point and mentally maybe for the last three, six months, that's what you'd understood to do. So the day it arrives, then it's almost like, this is just what we're doing. I've got to this point and this is where we are. [00:26:34] Adam Seaton: Yeah, part of it though was business as usual, to be honest. I mean, when you join into an organization like that, you don't suddenly just disappear into the four corner of that organization and get filtered out. We were a business unit. They didn't have a business unit like us. That's why they were interested in us. So it was very much, Adam, you are still in charge of this team. You might be recall it also purchase Pythagoreous a few months before as well on the customer engage side. So they had the C side, now they had the sort of the ERP side, and so they had the portfolio together. So I worked quite closely with Julian, who came from the Pythagoras side. And we were still, heads of our business units effectively, but under sort of partnership directorship. So in principle that kind of started just fine, and then over a period of time you make those integrations and those transitions and it's a complex thing. It's a complex thing. You've got your infrastructures, you've got domain names, you've got customers with contracts that need transitioning, and particularly a company like EY that has very strict rules about their governance and their due diligence and their independence and the rules they have to follow as auditors as well. Those rules are complex and quite intense, and so jumping through those hurdles and the whole due diligence piece was a complex piece of work. So it was almost like you didn't have time to stop and pause because there was always something next to do and there's always a job to do and there's always something going on and always something to help you with that transition. I'm thinking back, what was the emotion at the time? It was like let's crack on. We've got a lot to do here. It's like on onto the next chapter, let's keep, going. Yeah. And I was, you know, I was committed to spending some time there to help with that transition as well. So, I don't recall it being other than trying to make it business as usual. [00:28:00] Phillip Blackmore: When I think back, you were in EY for sort of 12 months or so. Was it 24 months? [00:28:05] Adam Seaton: This is where some of the challenges came through to me was like, I should have been. But I exited before my time. There were some challenges around that and I don't mind quite happy to share those. You know, there's a couple of things. At a personal level, I underestimated how difficult it would be personally to transition into that in the long term. [00:28:21] Phillip Blackmore: Hugely different environment and culture, isn't it? [00:28:23] Adam Seaton: Yeah, it is. I have so much respect for the guys at EY. They're a very clever team, and I've absolutely no criticism at all for the deal we did or the way it played out for me personally. In the end. Not at all. But I personally find it quite difficult to sit between a team that I was previously responsible for and sort of a partnership structure. That I wasn't part of, and having limited ability to influence that strategy at that level that I was used to. That's probably just on me. It's on me that I don't perhaps work terribly well with authority and other people telling me what to do. The truth of that played out pretty quickly, and I realized quite quickly that I wasn't gonna be able to see out the term that I thought I was gonna see out. I do slightly regret not being able to personally being able to see out, what I thought was the full plan for the period of time that I would've liked to. But you play it as you see it at the time, Phil, and I'm always a big believer in this. You make the decision with the information you have at the time. We made the right decision. That remains so and for me, personal circumstances changed. You know, I've got a young family and a son about to do his GCSEs and they hadn't seen me for a while. You do take a step back. I think many people do in their late forties, fifties, mid career or towards the end of their career, and you say, yeah there's, other things in play that are more important than what I'm doing right now. [00:29:32] Phillip Blackmore: No, absolutely, and then you finish with EY, take a little bit of a break, and then it kind of brings us up to where we are today. What was it that in your own mind and your feelings that brought you into the business decision and the business that you're doing today, and if you'd tell us a little bit about the business and the organization that you've set up. What that focus is on, please tell us a little bit about that, Adam. It'd be great to hear. [00:29:57] Adam Seaton: I took a year out essentially, so did nothing to spend some time with the family. It sounds a bit crass as an entrepreneurial inclination that I've probably failed more little startups that I've succeeded with. So we shouldn't forget the one that sort of did work. There's also half a dozen that, didn't along the way. That's what entrepreneurs do. I started tinkering with a few bits. I was importing samples from China with a view to set up some web shops and distributed some goods and the more lot of these markets, they were complicated. I was tinkering. I've got a little hobby. I quite like watches and horology and I started of course about watch repair. I set up a little business with friends and family initially fixing their broken heirloom watches, and I was gonna spend some time doing that. [00:30:36] Adam Seaton: And that was all very nice. Nice little hobby jobs to fill your time, but nothing was ever gonna take off. With the watches in particular, I realized I wasn't very good at it either. It's quite a skill and quite an art. I was breaking more than I was fixing. So, you know, and after a year or so, me kicking around the house and trying all these little projects, my wife quite rightly said to me, Adam, you need to go back to work. [00:30:53] Phillip Blackmore: Enough's Enough, Adam. [00:30:55] Adam Seaton: Yeah, stop mucking about. Go and do what, you enjoy doing, which is building proper businesses. And I think the differentiation is building other businesses with other people. I think I work better in a CoLab space where I could be a big part of that, bring my skills and experience to bear, but I also need to feed off the energy of other people and the skills of other people as well. I got together with a couple of the ex Seaton Partners team. I invited, a gang to the pub and we sat there and I sort of said, who fancies going again? But it was who fancies going again, but with a difference. I don't wanna run it, I don't wanna be funding it. So who wants to put some cash on the table and let's have a, you know, a seed fund. We could all take an equal share in at this time and let's go and see if we can make a dent in the market. I was out of all my EY sort of contractual obligations by then. I wasn't being naughty doing it. There wasn't a great take on that if I'm honest. Everybody was very, very keen to work with me again and said, if you wanna drive something, we are on board, and we were very gracious about that. But it's a different question saying, would you like to come and work with me to, would you like to invest you know, a few tens of thousands of pounds at a startup? That's a different question and I realized quickly that was perhaps not the right way to take it. The one person that did sort of put the hand up after that meeting was Nicola. Nicola Garrett, who I'm working with now, and Nicola and I got together, there were several coffees in late to 2023 and she said, yeah I'm keen on some doing something. I think there's bits in the market we could attack, and that conversation turned into lots of coffees over a couple of months and lots of dirtying the whiteboard, and we came up with two areas that we were interested in. One was training, one was support, We thought both of these areas, the dynamic space, were due for a bit of a shakeup. For various reasons, support fell away a little bit, mainly because it's a little bit harder to start in that territory. We didn't have the customer base, we didn't necessarily have the technical skills either to do it between the two of us, and we wanted to start something that two of us could at least start and get a customer. We wanted to start something that we could bootstrap fund without massive investment, and so we centered in on the training world and training became our focus and what is it about the training in projects that we could improve on how do we bring some new technology to that? How do we improve the whole world of training on projects? And that was where the conversation started. If you like, I'll take you through a few of the problems, if that's appropriate. [00:33:00] Phillip Blackmore: Yeah. No, please do. Yeah [00:33:01] Adam Seaton: So, we looked at training and training is often seen as a, when projects get squeezed, it's often the bit that gets squeezed. You need to go live. Pressure's on. Timelines get squeezed. It's at the end of the project. Budgets and time is difficult, and of course in the post covid world, a lot of those people that we train are now working at home. They're difficult to reach. The statistical challenges. We recognize it's sort of a one-off event and training shouldn't be a one-off event. We're in a world with cloud software that changes several times a year. Technology is iterative, is how I think of it. It is little steps all the time. You implement what you gotta implement and you grow and take little steps of business improvement forever. And that's a cultural change in the business about taking a long-term view to long-term learning. But training is always a one-off deliverable in a project, and then rarely revisited. So first thing was right let's make it a long-term solution. That was first. Second was we wanted to make a product. We wanted to make something that wasn't person dependent. I didn't want it to be the Adam Training Company. I didn't want to be standing up in front of a class being the one person to do it. So we wanted to build some way of delivering it that was person agnostic and that was a key part, and we also wanted something, I think really importantly, we wanted something that was measurable. That was more structured, that we could monitor. That we could take to a go/no-go meeting and put some tangible metrics around how well are your staff trained. And often that's a very a little bit of that. So a little bit heuristic, a bit of a guesswork. We think we are ready, we are not quite sure. So measurable, long term, and we also wanted to make it user focused. And a lot of training is delivered by project teams down, and I'm not saying it as a an industry criticism as such, as a cultural thing, but I think a lot of users are not given the credit that they deserve, and the skills that they require in order to do their job properly. They're seen sometimes perhaps as just the button presses of the world, and Nicola and I were quite passionate. We are quite passionate that those users are actually your advocates. They're your product champions. They're the ones that are gonna drive the change. They're the ones that have to adopt. And when we think about, empowering those users as, a certain software company's famous mission statement talked about empowerment. We were passionate that empowering people isn't about give them more software. It's about teaching them how to use the software that they've already got properly. And this was a really key point to us. So if you pull those together, a long-term, measurable, user focused, we came up with what we have now, which is our Joe how product, and the solution to that was a learning management platform and for the last year, we're building. We're building great content in video format using AI avatars and text to speech translations in foreign languages. Building a catalog of training material around dynamics that we can take to market. That's been the core of what we've built and why we've built it. [00:35:43] Phillip Blackmore: I think it's interesting to hear, you having that energy and enthusiasm, and I think it is about finding a niche in terms of there are gaps out there often, and again, I speak in a very generalistic term here. Sometimes, Partners or some of the Partners previously haven't maybe focused upon training, so it hasn't necessarily been an area that they would necessarily focus upon as part of their practice offering. And the customer would often get to an end of a project and find that training's been told that's your responsibility. You need to do that. It isn't delivered with the same energy and vigor, that may be the early stages of a, project is. So there's definitely a gap out there in the market for that. Your previous experience of building your practice at Seaton Partners, are you able to take some of that knowledge into the new business? Does that help? Does it help to have that previous foundation of experience, or is it quite different in terms of the business model being quite different so that there's not so much synergy moving forwards. [00:36:44] Adam Seaton: The business model is very different. I think where it has helped is helped having, industry context. We've been able to go and approach people that we've known industry for years and say, I mean, a few were very gracious for us in the early stages of sort of R&D. We showed them the product and said, can you give us some feedback? And they were very gracious with their time to have a look at the product. We're still in touch with some of those people. Some of our prospects have come through that pipeline. Having the connections has been super helpful. Knowing people has been super helpful to hire, you know, so we've got people we know now contractors and ex-employees that we can go and say, this is what we building do you fancy joining us? And Liza, for example, has jumped on board recently to come and help us with the project management side of things that's working out beautifully. Those sorts of things help. But the model of the business model itself is very different. We have a little bit of an in joke in the office that if we issue a time sheet, we've done something very wrong. We want to be a product based company, training as a service, you might call it. That's what we want to do. That's how we scale it by being a product business, not a services business. Of course, we need to wrap it with some good people and some good sales and some good project management and change management and all those good things. But essentially we're a product based business. So it is very different model. Yeah. [00:37:47] Phillip Blackmore: It's exciting starting, going on that journey again. And you know, when you think back to those early days of Seaton partners, you're kind of almost reliving that again now, and I guess at least you've got that to lean on, it sometimes does take a little bit longer, but what happens in good times? Sometimes you create those foundations and it gives you a really good business to take to market. So yeah, exciting times. [00:38:06] Adam Seaton: I think that's part of what is interesting and, and, the technology's interesting for, I mean, the technology's moving so fast, faster than I think we've ever seen it. You know, we we're in this AI age now and we'd be struggling without that technology, but I think the market's changed as well. You talk about the big Partners and we'd love to work with some of those bigger Partners because we think we can offer a complimentary service to them. Without eating their lunch as it were. We're not looking to take revenue off them. We just think it's a complimentary service that we can offer with different projects. So our market's two term, it's one courting the partners and seeing if we can make some money there, but also working directly with sort of greenfield sites and projects directly. And I wouldn't say it's a trend, but it's certainly something we've seen in the market. Maybe you can echo this if you see the same, is that I think more projects, particularly more at the enterprise space, which is probably where we're leaning, are built internally within the company and they're using partners less as a one stop shop, sort of the big partner we bring everything approach and they're using one partner for data migration and perhaps another for infrastructure, another for integration services and another for power platform. And hello, we are here to help you with your training strategy. And I see that model of I guess we use the term boutique partners a little bit too much. But essentially specialist partners that bring those skills together and a customer using more than one traditional partner to deliver their project. I think that's something we'll see more of. We'd like to position ourselves in a way that we are the training partner of choice when customers want to make that strategy play out for them. [00:39:27] Phillip Blackmore: Yeah, without a doubt. We see it as the product has gone into larger organizations, enterprise programs being delivered, those organizations are more accustomed to using. specialist businesses to deliver what they're best at doing as opposed to it being we just go to this one organization to do everything. Cause I think those people often have had prior experience of delivering these complex programs and they've seen it done previously, and they do have that appreciation for take the best in class for each area. It helps greatly. So then if we wrap it up with a couple of quick questions, Adam, I'd love to sort of get your thoughts and if you were sat across the table from a CTO, CFO that was saying to you, Adam, I'm just about to embark on a large scale D 365 program, what advice would you give them? [00:40:15] Adam Seaton: Oh, Phil, that's the killer question, isn't it? [00:40:18] Phillip Blackmore: It's a tough one. [00:40:20] Adam Seaton: I'm not one for giving advice, Phil. I think people have to find their own roots. I should say that, Phil. I'm gonna it hard by saying I'm not an advice giver. I like coaching. Coaching, I'm a big fan of. Advice giving, I struggle. [00:40:30] Phillip Blackmore: Things to be aware of. [00:40:32] Adam Seaton: If I was gonna go with what I would say, engage early. [00:40:34] Phillip Blackmore: Yeah. [00:40:35] Adam Seaton: You think that things like training come downstream. They don't. It's a learning continuum. It not only runs through the whole phase of your project, it extends beyond the go live and for years to come as well. Don't leave things till too late before you engage with the right people to sort out things like training. Change management is another great example. Get in early, start early front, load your project with all that work, and then downstream might with a bit of luck and a fair wind be a little bit easier. But let's, let's be honest, feel projects are difficult. If they weren't hard, we wouldn't need project managers and program directors who are, worth awaiting gold to sort them out. So projects are tough. Let's celebrate those and people out there doing a good job. More of that please. [00:41:10] Phillip Blackmore: No, absolutely. We'll just finish on what, what's next for you, Adam, over the next few, sort of sit in your chair in five years from now where would you like see yourself? [00:41:18] Adam Seaton: Don't, not looking that far ahead. I think Joe is our focus right now. We're a hundred percent behind it. We've got our first customer on board. We're delivering that. They've gone live recently with our material. Our stuff is out there in the mix. We're driving the pipeline really hard, trying to get the next customers on board. And I think we can take that some really great places. It's difficult to look past the next year or two in terms of business growth. We'll ride the wave as it were if we can. But I'd like to think we've got something established in that five year period that's a bit more autonomous. Maybe the bit of luck. I could take a 5% step back or something. You know, You never know. But I enjoy, I enjoy what we're doing. I enjoy building the business and I love working with Nick and Liza. They are great pair to be sort of at the core of what we're doing. And I enjoy doing what we do and enjoy building that out. Enjoy the contacts, enjoy the connections and quite happy to stay in it as long as that's the feeling that we have. [00:42:03] Phillip Blackmore: Good people make good businesses, so you know that's the key to it. Adam, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. It's been fascinating hearing about your journey from initially infancy, touching the product back in the vision all the way through to the role and the business that you're operating in today. So yeah, it's been fascinating. Thank you so much for your time. [00:42:21] Adam Seaton: I'll just maybe reciprocate thank you as well, Phil, because I known you've worked for 15, 16, 17 years and they're definitely one of the good teams in the industry. And there's, you can't say that about all of them are unfortunately. So, thank you for your your support and diligence and professionalism over the years. Been very, very good. [00:42:35] Phillip Blackmore: My pleasure. Thank you, Adam. It's been great. Really appreciate your time. Thank you for listening to the Catch Up Podcast. Please subscribe to receive updates on our latest episodes. You can listen on your preferred platform or you can watch us on YouTube. Thanks for your time today.