Welcome to Great2
The story of Great2
It’s always exciting to launch a new website - it is such an effort to pull together the right combination of words and images to reflect ‘who you are’. And we hope you will enjoy looking through www.great2.co.uk and finding out about us and how we help our clients.
Great2 is 100% focused on supporting local small businesses grow.
We’re entrepreneurs ourselves, having set-up and scaled several businesses. It’s our collective passion and, personally, it’s my life’s work.
Great2 isn’t brand new, but we are certainly still in the early stages of growth. it’s an exciting time.
In the beginning: the first 3 years
Great2 started out as “Peak Indicators Investments Limited” and was incorporated June 2017 to develop the infrastructure to support the growth of Peak Indicators Limited (another business I founded back in 2008) and other digital and technology companies.
We provided services and funding to Peak Indicators, Peak EPM and HappyWired, and have been involved in two management buy-outs; Peak EPM and Vertice Cloud in Ireland. It’s been quite the ride!
Pivoting for growth: 2020 onwards
In 2020 we saw an opportunity to grow the business further. As the pandemic hit, we decided to repurpose our building - Hayfield House - from office space into a coworking space and invest in the growing community of local entrepreneurs we were connected to. We also saw an opportunity to provide our business support services to a broader range of growing businesses.
After a few creative brainstorms and workshops, the founding team - Andy, Katy & Pipa - came up with a new brand, a new proposition and a new business plan!
Great2 was (re)born
We know from research and experience that getting a new business, however brilliant the idea, is HARD. And research sadly shows that 80% of small businesses fail within a year. The main reasons being “faulty infrastructure”, “inadequate managing or funding” and “unsuccessful marketing”.
Things we know we can help with.
We’ve set-up, supported and grown several businesses from scratch; meaning we’re well-placed to share our insight, our passion and our people to help entrepreneurs make their businesses successful.
The essential things that growing businesses need
As with everything we do, we started by thinking about our customers’ needs. What do local entrepreneurs and small business owners really need?
Things like:
Office space and meeting rooms to bring teams together and meet with clients and prospective clients. Many small business, and solopreneurs, don’t want to be tied into annual contracts renting an office. They need flexibility.
Book-keeping and accounting support to make sure you’re managing your resources well and growing at a comfortable pace. This is often not a core skill for entrepreneurs (who want to focus on bring their ideas to life) but for many young businesses having a full-time finance team is unrealistic.
Recruiting, onboarding and training new team members takes a significant amount of time and effort. Again, something that ‘pulls focus’ from other important activities such as building and promoting your products and services. Having a full-time HR team for a small business is often out-of-reach.
Sales, marketing and business development are all crucial elements of growing your business. But it takes more than a few social posts to build a brand and connect with your target audience. Marketing can be a ‘side-project’ for many founders but is essential to sustainably growing your business.
Networking, advice and sometimes funding are also essential support to small business owners and entrepreneurs as they seek to avoid pitfalls and leverage local connections to build their company.
This is where the idea for Great2Work and Great2Grow came from
We created specific solutions focused on addressing these very real needs.
Great2Work would be “more than an office” - a vibrant coworking space with flexible membership plans and a supportive community of likeminded entrepreneurs.
Great2Grow would be “success services for startups” - a comprehensive collection of services to support business operations, financial management, HR and marketing.
We believe that by providing these two important areas of support we can help local businesses thrive. Which helps us grow too. Meaning we can have a great, positive impact on our local community. Which is very important to us all at Great2. So important that we wrote about it in our Manifesto.
So, what’s next?
We remain focused on developing new products and services that align with our vision of being a ‘force for great’.
We keep supporting our team, members, clients and communities.
And we start to explore what it means to become B Corporation. For those not familiar with B Corps, these are organisations that have been certified has having met rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency.
Some changes will be simple. For example, we already use Fair Trade coffee at Great2Work (v.s. whats cheapest or most convenient).
Some changes are not as straightforward; such as moving away from fossil fuels when Hayfield House uses gas to heat its water or eliminating any and all bias in our recruitment processes.
The important thing is that we start the journey. While I am not expecting B Corp status to be achieved overnight, I know that it’s an important next stage in our growth journey.
Andy
