Welcome to the first episode of Climb In Consulting for 2021. In today’s episode I speak to Simon Williams, Co-Founder of DMW Group and Non-Executive Director at LanciaConsult. Simon spent the vast majority of his career building DMW Group, which he and the team grew from just two of them, after a rather interesting start to the business, into a company of over 200 consultants today. Having spent 27 years growing DMW, Simon now advises a range of businesses and is a trustee to his old university college. One of these businesses is LanciaConsult and is how Simon came to being on the podcast, having been introduced by LanciaConsult’s Managing Partner Jeff Cronkshaw following our interview for this show. As you’d expect from someone who spent so long at the helm of a consulting business, Simon has wealth of experience when it comes to growing a successful consulting firm and leading through both the good times and the bad, much like where we find ourselves right now with the Covid-19 pandemic. In this interview Simon shares many of the insights that he’s learnt from his time building DMW and goes in to detail on many of the unorthodox elements of the DMW journey including: - Why DMW almost failed before it got started, and how Simon went from one of the most junior members of the team to leading the business in just a few short years. - DMW’s approach to partnering and why they decided to take the unusual route of collaborating with other boutique consulting firms to help them all win more business. - And Simon’s advice for navigating challenging times, like the ones we’re in now. How DMW was able to overcome multiple recessions and his advice for helping your business to do the same. If you’re currently planning your personal or corporate goals for 2021 and want to know what you can do to take your career or your business to the next level, or simply the steps you should take to ensure your business comes out of the other side of the recession as stable as possible, then I know you’re going to get so much from what Simon shares in today’s conversation. You can get in touch with Simon at – https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonjw/ Or – simonwilliams@peakflow.zone Visit DMW Group at – https://www.dmwgroup.com/ Visit his website at – https://www.peakflow.zone/ Specific things we discussed in the show: Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice by Matthew Syed – https://amzn.to/2LrbXQX Black Box Thinking: Marginal Gains and the Secrets of High by Matthew Syed – https://amzn.to/35ymsJo Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi