Episode 41 - Charles Vivian - North Highland

Today’s guest is Charles Vivian, Managing Director and Portfolio Group Lead at North Highland. Charles leads North Highland’s UK and north eastern US practices, a $100 million dollar consulting business. While you might be expecting the typical consulting career journey, Charles has had the complete opposite and has a hugely varied career that has spanned working for a global consultancy, founding his own start up, working for a boutique consulting firm and then working his way up to where he is now. Outside of work Charles has undertaken some phenomenal adventures including climbing Mont Blanc and running the Marathon De Sables, the world’s toughest foot race. In fact the reason that there was a slight delay on releasing this episode was that Charles was flying out the day after our interview to trek across the Artic! Charles’s approach to growing a business, growing your career and enjoying your life were fascinating and no matter where you are on your journey there’ll be something in here for you. We cover so many interesting topics in this conversation including: Charles’ start up journey, what he learnt from failing and his advice to other thinking of going out on their own. The importance of culture when it comes to building a consulting firm and how North Highland have created a culture that is open and supportive while welcoming challenge from all levels of the firm. The differences and similarities when it comes to working across the UK and the US and the importance of understanding the culture of the region you’re working in when it comes to building a Consulting business. How Charles fits adventures like his trip to the artic in to his schedule and his advice for others looking to balance work with doing more of the things they enjoy outside it. I really enjoyed this conversation with Charles. His unique perspective having worked across such a diverse range of businesses gave some fantastic insights and I know you’ll get a lot from this conversation. You can get in touch with Charles through his LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/charles-vivian-2931b72/ or drop him an email - Charles.Vivian@northhighland.com This episode is brought to you by Create Engage the Digital Marketing agency for the disruptive Management Consultancy. Digital Marketing has moved forward, but most consulting firms haven’t. Many Consulting firms still see their corporate blog as their sole Digital Marketing channel and find themselves frustrated when these blogs yield little if any results. To help those of you who want to harness the power of Digital Marketing to grow your Consulting Business but don’t have the knowledge, capacity or in-house capability to do so I launched Create Engage, the first Digital Marketing agency for the Management Consulting Industry. If you’d like to find out more about how Create Engage can help you use Digital Marketing to take your business to the next level then drop me an email at Nick@CreateEngage.co.uk or go to our website www.createengage.co.uk where you can download our free case study that breaks down down the Digital Marketing strategies used by one successful Consulting firm to help them grow over 400% in just 3 years and gives you the secrets they used, so that you can apply them in your own firm. Specific things we discussed in the show: Quedis - http://www.northhighland.com/en/about-us/newsroom/press-releases/north-highland-announces-qedis-rebranding Marathon De Sables - https://marathondessables.co.uk/ The First 90 Days by Michael D Watkins - https://amzn.to/2HPIbkL Get Abstract - https://www.getabstract.com/en/ Harvard Business Review - https://hbr.org/