The Inspired Marketing Group

There are now half a million less people in the UK workforce than before Covid. Lots of people are reprioritising what they do for a career, which businesses they work for and more generally how they spend their time. With unemployment at record lows and competition for the best candidates fierce what does this all mean for you, me and everyone else? In this episode we chat with Alec Frusher, Head of People at San Digital and IMG community member Kamila Zielinska to talk through their experiences of the working world over the last couple of years, their reactions to events as they unfolded over the last couple of years, the decisions they made and why and what they're now seeing and what that might mean for all of us.

We invite back Greg Simpson founder of Press For Attention to the first episode of season 2 for a look back over our first year in business, how it went, what was good, what was bad and which of the numerous guesses, predictions and thoughts made on our first podcast did we get slightly right or completely wrong.

In this episode, we are joined by the Co-founder of Dispace, Ross Cox. Dispace was set up a few years ago to match remote workers and freelancers with local businesses that had unused or underutilised space, creating flexible pop-up co-working spaces. It was visionary because this was a few years ago before anyone had heard of Covid or the word pandemic. Fast forward to today and Ross's vision for the future of work remains steadfast that when, how and where we work has changed forever. Now employees are pushing back on what work is for them and how they can best deliver value for their employers. It's the re-humanising of workers. A fantastic 45 minute chat where we discuss all the highs, lows and what maybes of the future of work built around where people live and where they want to spend time.

After our first 9 months in business we wanted to introduce you to some of the absolutely amazing people who have been on this crazy ride with us and who are delivering unbelievable results for our clients. On this episode we're joined by five IMG community members, all with different skills and experience and who are working with us for lots of our different clients. They share how they came to join IMG, how it's going for them and how what they hope for the future both personally and professionally.

We speak to the Karen Dales, Marketing Director of The Access Group's ERP division about life at one of the fastest growing businesses we've ever seen! Karen talks about pace, double digit organic growth & the frankly outrageous growth they're seeing via acquisitions. All sounds exciting & it is, but how do you do that during a pandemic? And, how do you plan your marketing resource for that kind of dynamism & scale?

This time we're joined by self-declared flexible working enthusiast Joanne Smalley. Owner of Cardain Communications, Jo talks to us about why she abandoned corporate life and working amongst the big city lights of London, moving to Majorca and opening a co-working space 50m from the beach. I mean... that actually sounds pretty good, right?

We are thrilled to welcome one of our IMG community members to the podcast this month as owner of Apricus Marketing, Clare Taylor joins us to talk about her leap into starting a business during a global pandemic. Clare has 20 years marketing experience across diverse industries including rail, pharma and manufacturing before making the leap into her own business. We chat about Clare's story, how she came to start her business, how it's going, what's next and how she's found working with us.

Our guest on this episode is Shaun Walsh, Founder and CEO of the Business Growth Institute. Over the last 15 years has combined strategic FD services to his hundreds of clients businesses grow and done all of that while operating on a remote basis with a team based all over the world. Hear Shaun's story from business 'marriage counseling', multi-year digital only colleague relationships as well as thoughts on the current and future potential business landscape in the UK and across the globe.

10% brilliant idea, 10% hard work, 80% dumb luck. That's the recipe we believe you need for a successful business. We hope our idea is pretty good, we'll work bloody hard and we've already had some dumb luck... But how does the Inspired Marketing Group actually work and why do we think it's the future of the marketing function. This is a short one because we don't want to be too self indulgent. Let us know if you think it's dumb luck or we're just dumb.

You know those ideas you get when you're doing something boring? The ideas you mull over and think "that might work..." Normally life gets in the way, or you talk yourself out of it. Well this is the story of one of those ideas. An idea that Richard Johnson and David Coghlan had at the same time. Once the idea of The Inspired Marketing Group had been spoken and neither Richard or David wanting to be the one to back out, that idea has now become the future of the marketing function.