Episode 275 · 12 February 2026 · 53:44
Why your 13th hire is like puberty (and what to do about it), with Steve Kemish
Featuring Steve Kemish
Why your 13th hire is like puberty (and what to do about it), with Steve Kemish
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The 13-person tipping point and business puberty
Meet Steve Kemish and growing for the sake of growing
What recognition really means and its cousin reward
Building culture when forging three businesses together
Steve's basic rule for 22 years of managing people
interview#management#leadership-principles#people-management
Learning the recognition lesson the hard way
Professional development as recognition and does everyone need it
interview#professional-development#recognition#employee-growth
It's not a one-player game and the P in protection
interview#teamwork#protection#leadership
Advice for 25-year-old Al and spidey senses
What to do when you think you're doing recognition right but aren't
Show notes
Why Your 13th Hire Is Like Puberty (and What to Do About It) — with Steve Kemish
Guest: Steve Kemish — CEO of Intermedia Global (IMG), a marketing agency he's grown from a small team into a business approaching 50 people, and currently ranked the 38th fastest-growing company in the UK.
There's a moment when your company hits 13 people where everything changes. Not gradually — suddenly.
Steve joins Al and Leanne to explain why this is the "puberty phase" of an organisation: the awkward, uncomfortable, and completely unavoidable transition from a tight-knit group running on instinct to a real business running on structure. Having grown three companies through this exact phase, Steve shares what founders rarely talk about — the identity crisis, the culture wobble, the communication breakdowns, and the leadership shifts that suddenly become non-negotiable.
They dig into why recognition isn't the same as reward, why operational fairness beats equality every time, and why the skills that help you start a business are not the skills that scale one.
Top 3 Takeaways
- Business puberty is real and unavoidable. At 12 to 15 people, you stop being a room where everyone knows everything and start being an organisation where communication, culture, and leadership have to become intentional. You can't skip this phase — but you can navigate it well.
- Recognition isn't reward — and it's different for every single person. Don't assume your definition of recognition is your team's. Spend time with people to learn what actually lands for them, because a one-size-fits-all approach misses the point entirely.
- Operational fairness beats equality every time. You can't treat everyone exactly the same when you're scaling. Fair doesn't mean identical — it means understanding individual needs, contexts, and contributions, then building systems that reflect that.
More From Steve Kemish
- LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/skemish
- Website: intermedia-global.com
Connect With Us
Get in touch, book a call, or find Al and Leanne on LinkedIn — all in one place: truthliesandwork.com/connect
Mental health support: findahelpline.com — UK: Samaritans 116 123 · Mind 0300 123 3393 — US: 988 — Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14
Truth, Lies & Work is part of the HubSpot Podcast Network.
Full transcript
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Al ElliottThere's a moment when your company hits 13 people where everything changes. This isn't gradual. This is sudden. Our guest today calls it business puberty, and he's lived through it 3 times.
Steve KemishI've been through 3 companies that have gone from less than about 12 to 15, 16 people through to greater than that. In fact, this organization, we went through that period in about 4 months. And I always say that it's worth learning that if you're going to be involved in running a business, You wouldn't recommend to your younger self to go through puberty in 4 months, and it's a real challenge with an organisation.
Leanne ElliottSteve Kemish is the CEO of Intermediate Global, currently ranked 38th fastest growing company in the UK. Here's what makes Steve different. He's not chasing growth for ego. He's been through the painful transition of business puberty multiple times, and he knows exactly where the bodies are buried. That 13th hire, it's not just another person. It's the moment you stop being a close-knit group of people who know everything about each other's work and become a company that actually has needs for— brace yourself— processes, structures, and all that grown-up stuff.
Al ElliottAnd if you think you can skip this phase or power through it, Steve's got news for you. You cannot. But you can survive it if you understand what's really happening and why recognition becomes the most critical tool you have.
Leanne ElliottHello and welcome to Truth, Lies and Work, the award-winning podcast where behavioural science meets workplace culture, brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, The audio destination for business professionals. My name is Leanne. I'm a Chartered Occupational Psychologist.
Al ElliottMy name is Al. I'm a business owner.
Leanne ElliottAnd we are here to help you simplify the science of work. If you are running a company somewhere between 10 and 50 people, today's episode might be the most important one you listen to this year. Because there's a specific moment around that 13th to 15th employee, where companies either figure it out or fall apart. And here's where it connects to something even more critical, recognition. Because when your company hits puberty, the old ways of showing appreciation, well, they stop working. What motivated your first 12 people won't motivate your next 25.
Al ElliottSo after this break, Steve's gonna walk us through exactly what happens at each growth stage, why recognition becomes your secret weapon, and how to avoid the ego traps that killed his first attempt at this. So don't go anywhere. The dirty little secret is that most businesses think they know their customers. They have the data, the records, the history, but it's Scattered across 3 teams and 4 systems. And in our case, it's about 216,000 spreadsheets, which means nobody can actually use it.
Leanne ElliottWhat you should be doing is using HubSpot, because why? HubSpot connects it all— every interaction, every support ticket, every conversation— into one platform every team can work from. So when sales talks to a customer, marketing already knows the full story. And when you know more, you grow more.
Steve KemishNice.
Al ElliottCheck out hopspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses.
Steve KemishSteve Kemish. I am the CEO of an organization called Intermedia Global, or IMG for shorthand. We're a marketing services agency based in the UK, but we work pretty much as the name suggests, globally. We work with a whole range of organizations, Normally fixing, Al, is probably the best way to put it, the messy cable drawer of life. If you were to describe that, if you're interested in anything to do with marketing, when modern marketing is technology, data, process, content, all sorts of stuff, if that's all a bit of a mess, we tend to reorganize that messy cable drawer for lots of different organizations.
Al ElliottJust to give people an idea of the fact that you do know what you're talking about, I believe you've just been named as one of the fastest growing companies on, what was the 38th fastest growing.
Steve KemishSo we're a top 40 hit, which Madonna did with Vogue at the same time. She went on to be number 1. I doubt we'll do that. But yeah, if it gives endorsement externally that what we do is relevant and useful to organizations, that's definitely part of it. More importantly, actually, for me with colleagues, it's not just me. There's about 40 of us that all worry about these things. So it's endorsement to all of those guys. As well that we are relevant, we are useful, we know some stuff that's worth knowing.
Al ElliottI sense in the agency world, there's a lot of people who just grow for the sake of growing, acquisitions, mergers, all that kind of thing. What's your thoughts on that?
Steve KemishI think I was probably one of them back in the day. So I was client side. My marketing career started in various organizations up until about 2007, '08 when I left to become agency and consultative. And so during that That second arc, if we'd have been doing this back 2011, Al, I think retrospectively my ego might have said, yeah, well look, well let's grow. Bigger is better. And I've certainly learned the hard way that just building for the sake of it and saying, oh, I run a company of, and by the way, I never introduce myself as running a company. I work in marketing. That's as far as I'm concerned it needs to go. I have a job title that's different to others. that do it. But back then you may have felt like, well, you could puff your chest out. I run a company of 50 people. But that is in a service-based industry, which typically marketing is, that is a really tough gig. And I think therefore, if you just do it yourself in terms of organic growth, that's one thing. M&As is a completely different matter again. And that's a bit like trying to weld families together. I'm sure there are people that are listening that resonate that they've got stepsiblings or maybe they've got children that are stepchildren.
Al ElliottYeah.
Steve KemishThey don't always necessarily get on just because you shove them in the same house together. There's all sorts of big and very small things that are different in different cultures and organisations that if you just put them together for the sake of it, it may not be a harmonious family life that you lead.
Al ElliottWhat are the things you worried about when you were 20 that you maybe don't worry so much about when you're 50?
Steve KemishIf we rewind back from 20, where I think it's really important, and I've seen this a few times in that second half of my career agency side, is When you go through the puberty of running a business or being in a business. So we all know, hopefully all of us that are on this call, that the struggle that is adolescence. When a company, and I've been through 3 companies that have gone from less than about 12 to 15, 16 people through to greater than that, going through, in fact, this organization, we went through that period in about 4 months. And I always say that it's worth learning that if you're going to be involved in running a business, You wouldn't recommend to your younger self to go through puberty in 4 months. And it's a real challenge with an organization because you change from a room of people that everybody knows everything that everybody else is doing, and it's in my head or it's in Al's head or in someone else's head, to you're a proper company where you need process and you need all the grown-up stuff. And I think there's almost this business adolescence that I think is really important to call out for that change in organization. You see culture shift again, by the way, When the business gets a bit bigger. I think when you get to more like where we are actually, 30, 40 people, and I'm sure there are bigger shifts, but I've always been in organizations that have been around this size. So around the 50 or below. So I can't talk to greater than that.
Al ElliottInteresting. Interesting. I've never heard that term adolescence or business adolescence.
Steve KemishNo, I've only just coined it. I mean, it's not that it— no, well, it's just what I've always thought is it feels like you're going through puberty or business change. So it's just a good way of analogizing for me. So I tend to work in analogies because my brain's quite simple. If I get it in another walk of my life, I normally get it in the primary function I'm trying to understand.
Al ElliottWhen we last spoke, you were using the word recognition quite a lot. Now, I sense that some people might not fully understand what recognition is. So what do you mean when you say recognition is a big part of growing?
Steve KemishI think it's a really very complex word recognition. It should be quite simple. And if you bring in its cousin reward, it's a conversation we have quite a lot this end. In fact, I had this conversation on an all-hands meeting with all colleagues yesterday this week, where if you think about reward and recognition as the same, if I can meld them, when you try and ask a team of 40 people, so 39 others, I'll get 39 different responses to what recognition and reward means. And that's an important first point is you'll never get a dictionary definition of what recognition means. What I might want to give or receive as recognition may be entirely different to those 39 others. And that doesn't mean you can necessarily always offer that or adapt for that, but trying to recognize that recognition is an individual thing is important in a business so that when you shape things like employee benefits, simple things like, for example, we have unlimited staff holiday. Now that's a really big thing to say. And we put it in 4 years ago, but it's a brushstroke, right? It's a one-size-fits-all. And the element of worry when we put it in was, will it work? We'd read that much larger organizations actually have used this over the last 10, 15 years. Rather cynically, actually, I think that it tends to reduce the number of holiday days people take. I've studied behavioral science, so I find the framing of these sort of things fascinating, is that if you put a particular number in front of people, higher or lower, then it tends to change behaviors. So unlimited is one that's just difficult because you're like, well, what does that mean? I don't know whether I'm taking enough holiday. But in reality, what we found is we are, on average, people are taking slightly more than they would've done on our old scheme. There's a couple of outliers who take a lot more, but not because they're lazy or they don't do a great job. The nuance of their work means they can, and their recognition, their reward system is, we like to take a break. I like to go on holiday. Others in the organization, all they want from recognition and reward will be entirely different. I don't work, I'm lucky that I don't work with people that are wholly money-focused. I'm not in that sort of company or industry, but there's nothing wrong with that either. We all have to pay bills. So if recognition is actually the picture of the king on the back of a note or many of them, that's all right. The key thing is to try and understand what does an individual, people you work with and you care about, What do they need from recognition? Not kind of a metaphysical pat on the head, but sometimes, particularly actually in my role, I have a job title that I absolutely hate, CEO. It just sounds so frankly awful. It can be used quite effectively at times, but I tend to avoid using it. But internally, it can just sometimes be good to go, well, the CEO said I did a good job. Oh, just for the tape as well. You said you thought I was a great guy earlier, just in case that gets missed from the cut from this. As he puts his ego back in. But it's, you know, you sometimes need to recognize that just being a nice person and a kind person with your seniority, with your experience, can go an awful long way. That's recognition for some, but others, you know, actually it needs to link to something tangible.
Al ElliottWell, this is a perfect segue because you said if you ask 40 people what recognition means, you'll get 40 different answers. You've just given us 2 potentially amazing ways in which you can provide recognition, but that's only satisfied 2 of your 40 people. So how do you even reconcile these 2? How do you work out what you're gonna do to recognize people?
Steve KemishWell, you need to spend time with them first. So when we, as I mentioned earlier, we forged 3 businesses together. About 5 years ago. Now, the collective sum of that company, new company, was only about 15 people. So smaller than it is. And that's part of, as you've said, we've grown. And the Sunday Times thing, right? We're really proud of it, but it's just a headline number. There's stuff underneath it that's more important to us. But a part of that is when you've got more work, you need more people. It's not quite a linear line. But when I first came in, and it's something I try and do with everybody that starts, is I have this basic stop-start-continue principle with one-to-one people, which when we first all came in, it was like, look, you don't know. We did know each other, not as well as we did from the 3 different practices. Was, okay, look, in your view, what do you think in your day job, micro or at a macro level in the company, we should stop doing, we should start doing, we must continue to do? See, I'm lucky because it's the size of organization and I'm interested in people's views to try and disseminate those to get some input rather than just in an ivory tower. That said, the test and learn, I'm a marketeer. My whole professional being has been taught that you have to test and learn. You'll never get it right first time. So you can take that culture, I think, into trying to make change around, if we're talking about reward systems or recognition of peers, be it colleagues or otherwise, try it. If it doesn't seem to work, then change it. It's in the gift of a much smaller business. It's one of the reasons I love now working in a smaller company. In my client-side days, when I started my career, I worked in very large organizations and I learned so much, but you move at the speed of a supertanker and you're a tiny cog in that supertanker that if the cog fell out, the ship may not notice. Whereas when you're this size, everybody's got a voice and it makes a difference. You also can go a lot faster, which It's terrifying in some ways because I don't know if you've ever been on a speedboat, and I don't think I've ever been on a speedboat, but I've been on boats that go fast and that feels quite terrifying compared to the safety of something bigger. So it's not always the case for everybody career-wise, whatever you do, that you should— smaller is not always better. It can be quite terrifying and it's not the right journey. Safety in the big ship or in the slower moving kind of waters of what we do.
Al ElliottSo I want to move on to the impact, and I'm going to start quite specific and then move a bit more general. So something you said there, stop, start, continue. First of all, can you tell us, give us an example of how you might implement that in a one-to-one, and then also what the impact that has on the person you're talking to?
Steve KemishI mean, my basic, for 22 years of managing people, I have a very basic rule, which if you and I, this is ridiculous, Al, because we're on a podcast, but if you and I were in a one-to-one, I have 2 rules, which are, look, we're in a virtual or physical room, the door's shut, nothing leaves this room unless we both agree it leaves the room. I.e., you can tell me whatever you want. And back to my point around job title earlier, that gets harder when your job title changes and the bigger the company, because it's like, well, I don't know them very well. Can I trust him? His job title says that he could fire me. Those are all the cynical bits in the unconscious brain that might come out. So it's a case of step one is, look, nothing leaves. I'm here to collaborate with you. And second point is the only exception, and I've said this for 23 years and never used it, is unless you tell me something so heinous, I think I have to take it out on behalf of both of us, but I've never needed that. So I think first it's setting an environment and whether that fully works all the time or not, and it's my way of doing it rather than the way, is try and get people comfortable to go, look, you can trust me. Tell me what you mean and tell me stuff that you think I might not know. I'm not interested in good news. It's always nice to get plaudits, right? But for me, you can't change and improve a business or a working relationship if you just focus on how great it is. Well, what's getting to you? What's the bit of grit in your shoe that if you leave it in there will become a blister and become uncomfortable? And therefore what you tend to get, the really interesting stuff are quite small minutiae that get quite big change. The 1% change from somebody saying, do you know what? I wish we didn't do these meetings. Well, why are we doing them? I don't know. We always have. And that legacy of, well, somebody set it up once and we just do it. Humans form habits quite quickly. That can be quite important to somebody. Or, my desk, I could do with this thing. And I won't give you specific examples because I wouldn't want to embarrass anybody, but they're often quite small requests that feel like they're a big thing to ask for. It's like, oh, great. Yeah, we can do that. We can make immediate change. Good. Yeah, absolutely. And then it becomes a bit viral because everyone else goes, well, yeah, that would be useful to me as well. And then suddenly one person's confidence to go, this could be better if we started doing this or stopped doing that. You've got a whole complete business change without really much effort. And it's not come from on top. It's come from, you know, you're not dictating, we will now do this. You're just listening to what people want and trying your best to give it to them where you can.
Al ElliottSo for someone who's not doing this, they might think, oh, that sounds like a lot of work. I sense there's a lot more reward for you in doing it than not doing it.
Steve KemishDefinitely. Yeah. I take greatest pleasure in working with people and seeing people achieve and succeed. Minor things, major things. So again, back to our values, right? And this is where, not unashamedly, I don't think it's quite the right word, but I have had a heavy influence on the values that we work to just because I've been around Longer than others that I work with. I'm not necessarily the oldest in the company, but I'm one of the most experienced in the company. And the 2 top ones for me are make people look good or make others look good and make their problems go away. And it's quite easy to that first one to have been make customers look good, but it's intentionally others. And that could be a colleague. It should be a colleague, right? There shouldn't be an ego in this. So if you and I are working on something, And my position is more senior or different to yours, why can't you have the credit for it? You might be the one that asked the seemingly daft question, which was a— or gave a daft answer, but someone else in the room went, well, no, that's not right, but I wouldn't have thought of this and I've now thought of that. Well, that should probably trace back to, that's something you've done. I've been in rooms in my earlier career where people will ignore me, Or steal my good ideas or make me feel like the one thing that I used to dislike the most at large companies is if you haven't got the right job title, you shouldn't possibly speak, that kind of culture. And it wasn't, we're talking a long time ago, but, and it was rare, but it happened. I've always thought, well, I don't want to, I want the person that's got, and again, actually one of our values is experience is not necessarily a monopoly on good ideas. Just because I'm older than you doesn't mean I've got a better idea. The most insightful people are often ones that come in and go, oh, hiya. This is why I do the stop, start, continue where I can, is that people have come in new and go, sorry, this is a really dumb question, but why do you do that? Why do we do that? And everyone looks around and goes, I don't know. If there's not a good answer, then it's just, it's that kind of inertia that's crept in that we just have always done it. Let's change it. And I think that is my being, but it's also professionally because marketing is Always about test and learn. 3 words there, right? Not one. Test, easily done in marketing, and learn is the bit that often gets missed. Well, what has that taught us? Rather than we tested it, did you learn? Oh, I didn't have time.
Al ElliottSo 2007, 2008, I think was the year that you went out kind of on your own way.
Steve KemishClient side. That's right. Yeah. And hoped.
Al ElliottWell, when you jumped into that pool, had you already learned the lesson that recognition was going to be out there? A large way of your management style?
Steve KemishNo, I don't think so. I didn't even think I had a management style, and I don't necessarily think I do now. I try and treat people like they're decent human beings and treat them with respect where I can. I don't care what your job title is or your functional experience. You're human. You should be kind of respected and looked after. So no, I don't think I did. And I didn't actually leave client. I was managing a team when I left, but I went from that to be a consultant. Kind of, I'm going to tell the world things that I need to tell them. Plus also, to be honest, Al, the main reason I left, if I'm being brutally honest, is I worked and I loved the brands I worked for, but they were big companies that no one's ever heard of because they were in business-to-business industries. And I just thought, I'm sick of my mum asking me what I do. So I was like, right, sod it. I'm going to try and work for companies she might have heard of. And I was very fortunate. My first 2 consultancy jobs, were with British Airways and Skype. Now Skype in 2007 was a big deal, right? For this post kind of Zoom Teams era, Skype is probably known, but it was really growing. And I was terrified going into both of those organizations. Skype, if you don't know, is from Estonia. Estonia's got a really good history of innovative startups, but that was based in London. But British Airways, everyone heard of them and it was like, oh my God, what am I going to know? How am I going to be relevant in there? But the interesting thing, and it's a drift off management, but I think it's a useful one for anyone that's in whatever career you're in. If you're considering that move from being client side to supply side, so whether it's a consultant agency for me or whatever version in your industry it might be, fundamentally most companies have the same problems in the worlds that I work in. My stock phrase now, 20 years later, is if you change the surnames, you change the haircuts and the logo, Nothing else changes. And therefore, I learned this in British Airways in their headquarters near Heathrow, putting in a room. I was like, okay, he's the expert, he'll know. I said, well, just explain to me the context. And I was like, oh yeah, this is like everything else I've learned in the last 10 years. It's just a different industry, but it's the same problem. So I think there's a comfort in that confidence that if it's back to management style or dealing with and just working with people, Yes, there are nuances. Different people need different things. Back to the starting point of this whole thing around recognition. But ultimately, the more you kind of invest in trying to understand them, the more actually you can be relevant and helpful because often quite a lot of us need or want for similar things. It just may not always come out in the same language, but it will probably be getting to the same sort of heart of it.
Al ElliottIt's so interesting. What you've just said there has clicked in my head that marketing is a psychology of finding what people want and giving it to them. And what you've just described there is that workplace culture is kind Kind of funny, what your employees want and giving it to them. Yeah.
Steve KemishWell, yeah, I always say if I get bored at a dinner party, not that I go to dinner parties anymore because it's post-COVID times, but the idea that I will often say marketing fundamentally is to get you to want things you don't need. That's at its more cynical core of it, which I don't know, that is a bit too cynical for me. But the idea of actually marketing is very much a behavioral science topic. Hence, as I was saying to you, I think offline, I've studied behavioral economics. I find it a fascinating subject. to understand what is it that makes people decide to do or not do something when it comes to, in the context for behavioural economics of commerce, but in life that can be used. Governments should, and they do use behavioural economics, but not enough in my opinion to try and make changes to society in a good way.
Leanne ElliottDid you know that the UK's number one management podcast, that's us by the way, and the UK's number one marketing podcast, And you're not gonna say which.
Al ElliottFel, host of Nudge, UK's number one marketing podcast. It's brought to you— we need to do this in threes—
Leanne Elliottthe HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. For business professionals. And the podcast that you're listening to is brought to you by HubSpot.
Al ElliottSeamless. Seamless. Tell us about your latest episode, Phil.
Steve KemishUh, we've just done an episode on fake fandom and how New York indie bands are paying agencies to create fake TikTok videos about how much they like their work. And we talk about the behavioral science behind fandom and how that encourages people to enjoy the music and all of that good stuff and do some big things about how this affects the world of politics, business, and brands as well.
Al ElliottIt is.
Leanne ElliottIt's such, it's such a good Of course, you'll hear all the stuff you want to hear about how to grow your business by using behavioural science in your marketing. But there's also just some really interesting episodes that'll be right up your street. Personally, I enjoyed Can Balsamic Vinegar Make Beer Taste Better?
Steve KemishIt can.
Leanne ElliottAnd Are We All Just Status-Seeking Monkeys?
Al ElliottI am. Go and listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.
Leanne ElliottBut come back.
Al ElliottYeah, come back.
Steve KemishDefinitely come back because Nudge isn't as good as this.
Leanne ElliottSo come back.
Al ElliottI've got that out of you.
Steve KemishKeep that in.
Al ElliottSome people think that professional development is a type of recognition, and some people argue that, well, they should have that anyway. Where do you stand on that thought?
Steve KemishIf I come back slightly from it, so I don't always look at, I don't ever look at somebody in our organisation or any organisation I've worked in, if it's their job. What they are is they're with us for a period of their career. So for me, professional development would be, that's something that makes complete sense for the organisation to offer in the same way they'd offer a desk. And maybe water and coffee, is that if you want somebody to flourish, then that professional development, I think you have a responsibility as an employer to try and make your colleagues as effective as possible. And if you do that, you will benefit from them in the period they're with you. Now, that's not enough alone, but my experience is if you create an environment where people are happy, are rewarded, are recognized as safe, Then they don't necessarily have as much reason to leave you. And therefore, I think it's a bit short-termistic. Professional development, we're just going to improve their career CV for the next job. Well, yeah, you are, but they may not take that next job for maybe 2 years later than they would've done without it. And just think about the recruitment savings in terms of cost as well as effort and the continuity of having somebody and the fact that they might also— not leave because you can open up a new job because that professional development helped them to be better at something that means they fulfill a new role in a senior position or in a new position or wherever it may be. So yeah, I'm a huge— I spent 12 years teaching as a lecturer alongside my day job. So everything to do with education to me is really important, particularly in work, is you should never stop learning. And again, not to make this about our 7 values, but always be curious. Is really important, right? You can always learn something. So why not go and do it? If that's packaged in professional development, great. If it's unprofessional development, i.e., it's unstructured learning, then that's also good as well. Just being curious. Curiosity didn't seem to kill the cat. It just made the cat smarter, I think.
Al ElliottDo you think everyone on some level needs recognition, or are there just some people out there who can just crack on with the job and they don't care?
Steve KemishI'm not a psychologist, but my gut says everybody does. It's just different recognition. So for some, it might just be an unemotional, rational, practical, well done, cheers, thank you, versus some people need it much more open and much grander. For some, they're— and that's why I link recognition to reward, their reward system. I remember when we worked, when I worked client side in a large department, we were allowed to go home half an hour early on a Friday. It's like, It's like we've won the lottery. It was amazing. Not least because I worked on a business park that if you left at the standard time everyone else did, it took you an hour to get off there. So I think there were quite small gestures. But if you've got family, for example, we're pretty flexible this end that we're lucky, right? We're in an organization size with people that we don't need to monitor and track. They have a job. They know what their job is. If they can do that whilst also going to pick up—
Al ElliottYeah.
Steve KemishOr drop off children or go to sports day or something like that, the important stuff. There's the practical, I've just got to do it. So recognition might be, Al, you've done a great job on that. Look, I know you've got this, come out, just get out early and do it, or go out, do that, get back later and pick up the work. The work will be there. We know, we trust that you'll do it. That's a real privilege in our industry, in our company. I know there'll be some people listening in that might take jobs where it is much more structured, I used to work in retail when I was much younger. I couldn't just disappear off the shop floor of Clark's Shoes in Oxford whilst I was doing my A-levels on a Saturday for my A-levels. I'd be in trouble. So I get that as well. But I think there is even within there the ability to just be a little bit more human with humans to try and support and recognize. It's a long answer, but yeah, everybody's different. I think everybody wants some form of recognition. It'll just be different recognition.
Al ElliottThis is coming back to what you said at the beginning, is that, you know, you get 40 different definitions of recognition based on what they personally want. I apologize for asking this again, but I'm still just trying to get my head around, if you've got 40 people and they all might want different things, where do I even start working out how to motivate each one or recognize each individual individual?
Steve KemishWell, it's not a It's not a one-player game again. So I don't manage 39 people. There's lines of management in there. So there's a collective of, if we can kind of, I was going to say divide and conquer, but that sounds the wrong phrase, but we can just divide and succeed in terms of helping people. I think in an organization of any size, there are benefit systems that are much more progressive these days. So whether it's salary sacrifice schemes, for example, in the UK, which are pretty popular, The ability to say, well, rather than, I don't know, what's an example? The Ride to Work scheme. Okay. That's been around for a few years where you get a tax-efficient way of buying a bicycle that arguably speaking, as long as HMRC aren't listening in, people will use for commute, but they also will get benefit outside of work as well. That's just a great scheme, but not everyone wants to ride a bike. Where I think you can go a bit further. So if I'd had 39 people and 24 said, I want a bike, and 15 others, I don't want a bike, then a bike scheme is going to be roughly about what, 57% successful. Salary sacrifice and benefits, modern benefit schemes allow for flex. We have a system through a company where it's got a collection of different subscriptions. So some of it's for mindfulness apps, for wellbeing apps, for weight loss apps, for addiction apps. So giving up smoking or, and then in the postmodern world, vaping. Gym membership, heavily discounted or free. There's quite a smorgasbord of stuff in there. And that's a relatively easy way to solve the problem you've rightly posed, which is you can't necessarily do one size fits all. Again, are we unique? No, we're a fast-growing company. We are profitable in as much as we want to. We need to make more money than we spend. We are not gratuitously so. It's not, again, I don't think what I've described there is, oh, it couldn't be the gift of most organizations in most industries. You want to use, if it's such a thing as a Steveism, I always talk to staff about keeping a GRIP on finances. And I can almost see colleagues going, here he goes again. But GRIP stands for growth, reward, investment, and protection. So running a small business, this is very important that when you've got excess money, and again, I've just coined this as a way to try and say to people, look, reward's really important, but we also must grow as an organization. We need to—
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Steve KemishGrow as individuals. We must invest. And P is for protection. That's making sure we've got a rainy day or a rainy month or a rainy year fund the best we can. So I'm not advocating just go and spend it all on cool perks. See that as part of the mix. As I said earlier with professional development, if you give benefits to people, I think you're just being a decent human being, firstly. But more than that, if you need to make a return on that investment, you may well keep people. You retain staff longer. And that just takes away the stress and hassle or minimises the stress and hassle of recruitment, of continuity loss when you've, that member of staff that's gone onto another thing. Or indeed you find you get loyalty in a different way. It doesn't all just become, I want more money, I want more money. That people are much more grown up and mature about the world to just stick with you when times are tough. And don't get me wrong, we've had an amazing 4 years, but we've had tough times through it too.
Leanne ElliottYeah.
Steve KemishWhen you're a service-based business as we are, you are constantly fighting the, have we got enough work? Have we got enough of the right kind of people? And that is an impossible marriage to ever remedy and rectify. It's always going to be a case of you've either got too much work, too few people, or both. So it's not all a bowl of cherries from 38th fastest growing sounds sexy. And we've got a cool little red piece of acrylic somewhere in the office, but there's a lot more underneath it that can be difficult. So I think I'd like to think I'm fairly representative of a business Rather than just, that's just a glamour business. It is, humans are humans. We're dealing with the same sort of challenges as any business would do.
Al ElliottLike you said, change the haircuts, change the surnames, and it's the same problem.
Steve KemishChange the logos. Yeah, correct. Absolutely agree. I don't mean that glibly, by the way. I think it just gives a confidence to people that if you are thinking, would I know anything outside of my business? Yeah, you probably would in your particular discipline. You'll find quite quickly similar patterns. The clue is normally you sit with somebody and go, have you worked in our industry? No, I haven't. Okay, well, our industry's a bit different to other industries. That's normally the tell for me that it won't be different at all. But you honour and humour that and go, okay, well, have you got these challenges? In my world, is it, do you have challenges with sales and marketing alignment? People getting on in those 2 functions? Is your data bad? Have you got too much marketing technology, too little time? Is process difficult? Is it hard to get campaigns out the door? Is it hard to measure campaigns? Is attribution the holy grail of what you do? I.e., you spent some money on sales and marketing, but you can't tell what it is that you spent it on that's been effective. Yeah. And again, that's because in pretty much every organization you'll ever work in, those are the problems relevant to where I come into a business. Everyone here listening in will have their own version of it depending on their skill or professionalism or what they do.
Al ElliottLet me get some advice from Steve. So 25-year-old Al, God, almost 25 years ago, 25-year-old Al had a company which delivered beer to students late at night. And this was like way before Uber, way before anything like that. And so I had about sort of 20 part-time staff. And in the morning, about 7 o'clock in the morning, when we all finished, I used to say to everyone, go and get a beer from downstairs if you want one. And I sent someone off to the sandwich shop to get bacon butties for everyone. I was like, cool. All right. One morning, one of my members of staff said to me, I don't want a bacon butty. Can I have the money instead? At the time I went, uh, okay. But now I'm like, I don't think I handled that well because then should I have just given everyone the money instead? Should I have just denied it? What would, what would, what would Uncle Steve say?
Steve KemishI think you've got no perfect answer to that, but I think you've got the wrong employee in that team. And that's not to persecute them. But somewhere along the way, they've lost— we're talking cost versus value. And the value, I suspect, to everybody else was, well, that's good. For that particular individual, their cost-value set is different. I'd say it doesn't make them wrong, but it makes them different. That's kind of— it's a really difficult one to answer because I think the other aspect is, yeah, if I'm going to just apportion blame, it's, well, you are the manager. I always think it's like, if you've got— it's like children, right? If you've got to blame the parents, if there's a badly behaving child or, dare I say it, a sweary child or a racist child shouting out something horrific. I'm a big sports fan, multiple sports, and I wince at some of the stuff I might hear. So it's not their fault, it's the parent. So if you've got a child or a colleague who's thought, well, I'll have the £3.50, £4.50, I think the environment's wrong. I don't know. That's a very long answer to a really easy but difficult scenario. I think for me it boils back, and I think that where's the lesson here for anyone else listening in is you've got to always make sure that people see the value over here. I appreciate for podcasts I'm raising my left hand. And then you've got to see the cost over there from lower level when it's in the scales of things. So when actually we are working with clients or pricing things up or anyone's doing that, if you sell on cost, You're in trouble because you'll get a scenario like that. If you can sell on value of, look, what we've given you is this and it includes this item, then maybe you've got a chance. I don't know. I'm so pained for you. That's such a difficult thing to have to deal with, particularly at such a young, tender age, Al.
Al ElliottTo be fair, I went bankrupt 4 years later. So that wasn't the biggest problem of my time.
Steve KemishWell, you might link back to it. This is a complete segue, but I was thinking about it earlier. We work with a data partner who's really good at predictive models. I mean, they've been very good at this for years, but they can work out when a company is showing signs they're about to go within a kind of 18-month window of going bust by behaviors. Very weirdly, I was just thinking about this before we did the session today for a different reason, that they've got so much data over millions of companies over decades that it's just repeating patterns, but they'll see patterns in things. So there could be, even if we were to go back and go, that person asking for that thing and your response to that, was that a micro moment that triggered a kind of a period or a pattern? By the way, actually, if I may, just on the patterns, it's the other thing that back to that, what would I teach my 20-year-old self? And I know that wasn't quite your question, but the conversation I have with colleagues, I've a number of incredibly smart colleagues, but who are just younger than me. Their passport picture is kinder. And I always say, look, I'm not necessarily smarter than you, I'm just older than you. I've seen more patterns and I've recognized more of them because I've done this a long time. And I don't think you should ever misunderestimate the value of just doing or being doing something for a long time. So again, back to my slightly glib point around changing her name, Surnames and haircuts, hair names, good combo, that you end up seeing repeat patterns. And not just when it comes to my professional life in terms of marketing, but running a business, when you can smell people problems quite early and go, hold on, we're gonna have an early warning sign here, just because you've seen it before. And I think, if I may, the other side of the coin is there's rightly, maybe I'm more, it resonates more because I will begin with a 5 age-wise, not long in not long time, in the next year, that there are an awful lot of incredibly experienced people that are put on the sidelines because they begin with a 5 or, I don't know, 55 and above. The data is shocking in terms of not hiring for roles. So if you're listening into this, if there's one person listening in that's got a startup, got a brilliant idea, you're a bright young thing, it doesn't hurt to have some really bright old things around you as well because they'll see things that you won't know. are things because she just won't have seen them yet. So if I may, and that's not me advocating for anyone particularly, but I think experience can be really valuable from that pattern watching. Sorry, that's a real segue. Forgive me.
Al ElliottNo, because I want to go into that because I like this. I like this. In the programming, coding, web development world, they call it a code smell. It's not a bug, but it's the underlying, hmm, we're going down a bad road here. So what is, forgive my terminology, but what is a people smell? What's a culture smell?
Steve KemishI think it can be very varied. I mean, it will depend on, or so you've just given one actually in your last example of that person that went, can I have the money for there? That's not somebody for whatever reason. And as I said, blame the parents, the work parents, they're not in that right place. In my world, where I worry is when there's not playing to some of our values, not because they're our values, but our values, as I've said, are baked out of just collectively a lot of experience. When you've got people that aren't willing to adapt or listen to others in the room. So we're often collaborating, right? We're working on projects where we're trying to come up with a solution. And if you sense from a senior person particularly that, and I have had this a couple of times with people that thankfully I no longer work with, but they were just almost disrespectful of anyone that didn't have the same, in one instance, qualification, or in another, in terms of just the same lineage as them when it came to the role. Well, I've done this more. I'm always nervous of a combination of opinion and lack of subject matter experience. In another walk of life, I'm really terrified of stupid, noisy people. And I see that because I love sport and I watch sport and therefore I might stand or sit or watch sport and the judgment towards the coach or the manager of that particular sporting team. There's a lot of people on the sidelines that know better. But they probably don't. So there's no one tell. I think it's, if I may, Al, almost a spidey sense. Again, it's back to that and it's probably unconscious, which is why it's not talked about as much, is I can see a pattern. And again, from a psychology point of view, we drift in and out of subconscious thought, is that my unconscious thought of my— the unconscious part of my brain has smelt something. It's become conscious, but I don't understand what it is because it's conscious and the conscious and the unconscious brain.
Al ElliottYeah.
Steve Kemishcan't talk particularly well together. Therefore, the simple version of that is my spidey sense is tingling. I can't exactly put my finger on it, but something isn't quite right here. And it's because you can't access the bit of your brain that goes, we've got a whole library of these sort of things before. You just can't access it in your unconscious brain. Again, an entirely different segue again, but it's a fascinating part of the human brain that we are constantly taking in everything around us, almost like we're a human Alexa.
Al ElliottYeah.
Steve KemishOr a Google Assistant. If you think about when you are out and about having conversations, particularly in large busy rooms, you and I might be chatting and there's lots of other people in this room talking about things, a networking event or in a pub or a bar, and then you hear your name. Now you weren't listening to that conversation at all, but you had to have been at an unconscious level. Your brain was scanning almost like an Alexa listening for its trigger word. And Al is an important word to you. If it was Al Elliott, The alarms would be going off as to there. So you and I are chatting and you weren't giving me the illusion that you were consciously listening to their conversation. It's just happening. So I think we pick up a lot of these signals unconsciously of what's going to be a behavior that, as I said earlier, for a different reason, somebody's got a bit of grit in the shoe or collective shoe. That grit left will be a little bit annoying, but will turn into a blister that becomes really uncomfortable and we can't walk.
Al ElliottYeah.
Steve KemishWe can't move. So I think it's a back to experience without necessarily giving you a particularly coherent or strong answer on it will be these 3 things that you must always look for.
Al ElliottLet's think about someone who thinks they're doing everything right in terms of recognition, but they've not quite got it. What do you think they might be missing?
Steve KemishWell, I think the first thing is back to actually kind of conscious and unconscious. It may not surface. And when times are good, that's not a problem. We've had, as I said, a really, really rapid growth in 4 years. That's been at headline level like, ooh, well done, you guys. But under the surface, like, oh my God, hold onto the rope.
Al ElliottYeah.
Steve KemishAnd develop process. And within it, just keep up with all the things you need to keep up when you go through puberty in 3 months and you go from X to Y. You are not really tested on these things when times are good. I think it's, well, if you are, then you definitely have, from a management or leadership or cultural standpoint, there's something wrong. The challenge I think is when times are tough, you really understand whether you've got people around you that care and are loyal. And back the other way, whether your loyalty to them is in balance. So it's easy to reward when times are good if you are that way inclined. It's much harder when times are hard. And therefore, if you've got people that, people have bills to pay, people have family. We're not a charitable organization. No private organization really is. And therefore, if you don't recognize at a basic level, if you can't provide for your employees, I have I always say to people, if there's a company of 40 people, I have 40 mortgages, 39 of them aren't mine. My mindset is, okay, I've got to look after it. I've got to make decisions to protect everyone. So I think if you've got, and again, this isn't about me, but it's my version of where if you've got a company that is doing all the right things and times are good, then actually I think you'll find that you're not going to struggle in the same way when times are bad. That doesn't mean you won't have to make tough decisions with people, but even then, I think if you've done everything in a respectful, decent way, people understand, people get it. I've been in the situation twice over my arc of running or owning businesses to have to make redundancies. It's a brutal thing to do when you're in a smaller company. Horrible. And I've suffered redundancy in client side when there was thousands of people and you see like, I don't know, 300 names, but they're just names on a telephone call list.
Al ElliottYeah.
Steve KemishWhen there's 40, 50 people and you have to get rid of some people, it's real people that you know their families and you know that. But without question, when you've done it, and I've seen it done and experienced it, when it's done properly, and if you do everything right in terms of for the right reasons, then I think you're less likely to suffer when the times are tough. But that's when it comes out. Times are good, everything's easy. It's when things are tough or hard or you get a certain rug pull of a situation, That's when you really see whether you've invested right in your approach to people.
Al ElliottI think you're right. I think, was it Patrick Collinson from Stripe? I think they did some redundancy and they did it really nicely a few years ago. I can't remember the exact situation.
Steve KemishI mean, it's a really hard one. I can tell you stories of experiencing it not done nicely. I did work for a company once where, again, this was client-side, 4,000 employees, and it was a very simple, oh, okay, tomorrow between 8:30 and 9, If you get a phone call, you're being made redundant. If you get a phone call between 9 and 9:30, you're being redeployed. And if you don't get a phone call at 9:30, come in as normal. And it was just, you know, okay. So you can imagine, cue the next day, 4,000 people, including me, laying under my duvet, just not under, not everyone under my duvet, Al, not that big a bed, under our own individual duvets or whatever we use for bedding purposes, all just hiding.
Al ElliottYeah.
Steve KemishKind of counting down between 8th. That was the longest half an hour in the world. And my phone went at quarter to 9 because a mate phoned me to say he'd been let go. And it was like, I need a terrifying ringtone, even more terrifying than the clip from earlier in this conversation. So yeah, if you just, you know, it is such a cliché or a trope, but it can be anything. Just be nice to people. And I think actually it's bankable being nice. Nice is a terrible word. It was a nice walk, but just be a decent human being. Be straight with people, be good to people. And it plays out. We are really fortunate that we have incredible retention and loyalty in our organization. Companies that have stayed with us for a really long time because we are good at what we do and we're good in the way that we try and do it. We are not there to try and make a quick buck or to rip anybody off in or out of the business. And that plays out in retention. That makes life way easier in a small business because new business is so difficult. Anyone listening in, if you're not hit by about 10 people trying to sell you lead generation services via LinkedIn every hour, then why aren't you? And if you are, why are they doing that? Because it's such a difficult thing to do to get new business in whatever industry you're in. So therefore keep who you've got close. It's much, much better for you.
Al ElliottSo we've talked a lot about how you give the 39 other people, and I'm rounding up to 40, but the 39 other people in IMG, you've given them the recognition. What about yourself? How about the people at the top? How are you getting recognition?
Steve KemishWell, we're all part of the same team, right? So from a point of view of the schemes that we have, we try and make them universal. I work to this principle of operation fairness. I can't, you can't always be equal with everybody, but you can be fair to everybody. So there will be different kind of elements of reward that we have to have for slightly different roles. I take the greatest pride in— there's 2 things for me that are really important. Working with people that I enjoy working with, that's massive. I have to pay my bills as well. And as I said, I'll put it as a side point. I have bills to pay. Everybody has a life to lead. And I think therefore, if you can balance the 2, that you're doing a job that you enjoy with people you really enjoy doing it with, Maybe we've got time to talk about Dylans in a minute, which is our kind of internal language for people and organizations we just don't want to work with. Then if you can balance the fact that you can pay for your life and you enjoy your work at the same time, then I think that's a win. That's massive for me. I'm really fortunate since 2007. It's why I left mainly, not just to work with companies my mum had heard of, more because I had that Sunday evening thing. Oh God, it's Monday tomorrow. I haven't had that since then. I've been really fortunate that I've really enjoyed what I've done and I've done it and enjoyed it because I've done it with people that I just think are brilliant, enjoyable, rewarding, good people to spend time with. And that goes further than just employees. As I said, Dylan's just a kind of catch-all for us in the organization that says, if it's somebody that smells like they might be difficult as an individual, And companies don't really, this is a funny statement, but companies don't really exist. Companies are just collections of people and there's big collections of people, big companies and smaller ones. And so therefore the idea that, oh, I don't want to work with that company, they've got a bad culture. It's not the company, it's people. And therefore we do all we can. And this plays back to the ego point now. It's probably quite a nice circle to end on is when I was previously in an agency, we went from 3 to 50 people in about 3 or 4 years. So similar.
Al ElliottYeah.
Steve KemishIsh to today. I thought it was a big deal. But really what that meant is we built a payroll and a hungry, hungry machine that we had to feed every month with jobs. And that meant we made decisions to say yes to people that we knew in our heart of hearts, like, oh, they're going to be a nightmare. They're going to be difficult. They're going to be hard. And those are Dylans. We try really hard now to go, no, actually, for everybody's satisfaction, my own personal, but for everyone collectively, let's not spend our time with people, working with or for or around people that are not nice people, that don't play in the way that our values say. And then actually that for me goes a long way because you've got good retention, you're working with people you like and they like you. You've got good staff retention because you've got people in an environment that enjoy that because that's a real luxury to have where you're working with people and you're not being hit And beaten down by the man all the time. You get flexibility. You've got back to, and I hate it, but there are times where in our industry there's the 4 o'clock on a Friday call of doom. Sorry, Al. Sorry, Steve. I know it's 4 o'clock on a Friday, but I'm in trouble. Could you possibly get something back to me by midday on Monday? And that should not wipe out the weekend. But I like the idea that we go, well, we're trying to make them look good. We're trying to make their problems go away and a few other things besides.
Al ElliottYeah.
Steve KemishI think if you can surround yourself with good people, which was probably the best advice I ever given years ago, Steve, surround yourself with good people. The rest will follow for sure. And those good people, you can try and do good things for them along the way, best you can. You can say what you want about, to me, I've got pretty thick skin, but if you're going to upset people that I work with, then I will not be very happy about it because I have a responsibility for people that I work with to make sure that they're in a safe, rewarding environment. Which again, it's almost full loop back to if we'll allow reward and recognition to be same bedfellows, then there we are.
Al ElliottThat was Steve Kemish, and I wish all the founders we work with had heard this conversation before they hired employee number 13. Let's just wrap up with the top 3 takeaways for business owners navigating this kind of growth.
Leanne ElliottLesson 1, business puberty is real and unavoidable. At 12 to 15 people, you stop being a room where everyone knows everything and become a company that needs processes. And you can't skip this phase. You can only prepare for it. it by understanding it's coming and that it will be uncomfortable.
Al ElliottLesson 2, recognition isn't necessarily reward, and it is different for every single person. So don't assume that unlimited holiday or bonuses is going to work for everyone. Some people want time off, some people want public praise, and some want private acknowledgement. Best thing to do is ask them and then deliver on it.
Leanne ElliottAnd lesson 3, operational fairness beats equality every time. You can't treat everyone exactly the same when you're growing, but you can be fair by adapting your approach to individual needs, all while maintaining your values and your culture.
Al ElliottNow, Steve's done this 3 times, and he's learned from every painful moment. This business adolescence metaphor isn't just clever, it's a warning. If you're approaching 15 people, you're about to hit puberty whether you like it or not.
Leanne ElliottYou can find Steve at intermediate-global.com or search for him on LinkedIn. His surname is Kemish. That's K-E-M-I-S-H. And if you're going through this growth phase right now, send us a DM. Maybe we can help.
Al ElliottThat's all for today. Remember, growth isn't just about adding headcount. It's about evolving your culture, your systems, and most importantly, how you recognise the humans who are building this thing with you.
Leanne ElliottThis is Truth, Lies and Work. We will see you next week.