Michael and I are indeed like Chalk & Cheese (I'm almost certainly the cheesy one), but our differences are exactly why our partnership works. I need his ruthless focus and meticulous attention to detail as much as I know he needs me to look at the bigger picture and think laterally when we come up against challenges.

“He’s the Yin to my Yang and although I know our differences can be a cause of frustration, we both know we’re stronger for it.”

Why merge, why now?

My company (CommsLearning) has been around for nearly 20 years now, having grown from a background of classroom-based technical training into the digital learning business it is today. Over the years the business has grown (mostly) and shrunk (occasionally) but never really taken the leap forward I consistently planned in my business strategy. Year after year after reviewing our progress, I would ask myself the same question, why didn’t we grow more?

I've had many business partners over the years, and although they were all different from me, they simply weren't different enough. I needed someone who was both the polar opposite to me in terms of personality but also loved doing all the parts of the business that I found more of a drag and equally that wasn't as keen on the parts of running a business that I loved.

How I found my perfect business partner

Michael and I met back in 2017 as voluntary directors of The Learning Network, soon after that, I started working alongside Michael's business (ThinkBiscuit Media), supporting us in the delivery of some of our eLearning projects when we needed additional capacity. This quickly changed from being just 'burst capacity’ to working with some of our most high-profile clients on some of our biggest projects. It was obvious to me at this point, this was a match made in heaven (Or in Zoom at least!). Suddenly I had more time to focus on the strategy and growing the business in the knowledge that client projects were in the best possible hands.

At the beginning of our relationship, I was super envious of the ThinkBiscuit team! Michael has built and grown a truly remarkable team, recruited (by his own admission) in his own image. His focus on cultural fit and talent has paid dividends over the years (for us and our clients). I can't put into words just how awesome they are every day and with a smile (often backed by some Northern humour that goes totally over my head!).

After discussing the potential merger with my accountant Simon (I can't recommend Simon and McGill’s enough for the support and sage advice he’s given me over the years - worth his weight in gold, although I believe we pay by standing order!). Simon cooled my 'Let's just do it!' approach and shared that whilst most partnerships look great on paper at the outset, few feel the same after the first year and in fact, most break down by that point. For this reason, he suggested we essentially run a 'pilot' of our merger with us acting exactly as we intended in terms of sharing costs, resources, and ideas, but without launching the brand and going all in.

What's changing - What's not?

The right answer to the questions of what's changing and what's not required the balance of my urge to 'build from the ground up' and Michael's more pragmatic 'If it ain't broke... don't fix it'.

As such, our clients will find that the day-to-day running of the business is pretty much unchanged, just with a little more capacity and specialisation across the team, yet you will start to see some new ways of working smarter filtering down. We're now starting to use our increased scale to introduce more structure within the team allowing for more career progression, as well as diversification into areas like project management and even account management.

We have a few more changes up our sleeve over the coming year, but for now, our focus is simply getting back to business and building more great eLearning, which is what we do best!

What's our strategy - What's coming next?

As you can probably tell by now I'm more than a little excited and optimistic about the future of Mint. I know for certain that at last, we have all the pieces of the puzzle to allow us to do some truly impactful work, across the industry and the world.

We are the right people, in the right place, at the right time!

I'll share more on this over the coming months, the launch is just the beginning...

The future's Mint!