Episode 21 - Jeff Wellstead - Big Bear Partners & Gtmhub

Today’s guest is Jeff Wellstead. Jeff is CEO of Big Bear Partners and Chief Strategy Officer at GtmHub. Jeff is an expert in helping rapidly growing or hyper growth start ups manage their people challenges effectively. Before moving in to Consulting Jeff was the VP of Global HR at Message Labs and Global Director of HR at SpinVox.  In both roles Jeff was responsible for helping these rapidly growing starts up overcome the people challenges as they grew and continue their hyper growth trajectories. In the case of SpinVox Jeff oversaw the 9 fold expansion of the team from just 50 people to over 450 in under 2 years! As a consultant Jeff works with organisations to create the environment to allow their people to thrive and succeed at work while supporting the founding teams in overcoming the  strategic challenges that they face as hyper growth start ups. We cover some really interesting topics in this conversation including: How Jeff and the team grew SpinVox so quickly and the challenges they faced along the way The people and cultural challenges that hyper growth start ups face as they scale and the  warning signs you need to watch out for if you’re growing a business The importance of understanding where you are in your growth journey and ensuring you build the necessary structures to maintain your unique culture as your firm grows The importance of employee experience In todays world  and what you should be thinking about if you’re looking to recruit and retain the top talent in the industry And much much more! You can find out more about Jeff on her LinkedIn page – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrwellstead/ You can email Jeff at Jeff@BigBearPartners.com Specific Things We Discuss in The Show: Dunbars number - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number   Message lab - https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/messagelabs   SpinVox - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpinVox     Employees First, Customers Second by Vineet Nayar - http://amzn.eu/edvxufq Exponential Organisations by Salim Ismail, Michael Malone and Yuri van Geest - http://amzn.eu/henljqZ