Earlier this year, Lawson Conner were crowned a finalist in The Customer Focus Award and in The Elite London Stock Exchange Group Scale-Up Award.
Its CEO, Gerhard Grueter, has also been shortlisted for the Inflexion Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Dubbed the “Oscars of great British Business” by David Cameron, the Lloyds Bank National Business Awards will reveal its winners on 13thNovember.
In the run up to the Awards Ceremony at Grosvenor House, we caught up with Gerhard Grueter.
What do you currently do at your company day-to-day?
Put the right people in the right seats, every day.
What was the inspiration behind your business?
To reduce risk in the financial services industry globally and build a global professional services champion. We have seen a real gap in the market to provide technology driven solutions in a market which is dominated by manual processes.
Who do you admire?
I admire every one of my team members, who are experts in their fields
Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
There are a hundred things you could have done differently, but you only know in hindsight. If there is one thing: I should have surrounded myself early with other entrepreneurs to discuss the key factors to take the business global.
What defines your way of doing business?
We are only a small microcosm of what is a major shift happening in the world of business, but what really helped us is doing business in an honest and transparent way that’s truly built to last. We listen closely to what our customers need and we deliver what they expect. Communication is key, internally and externally.
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
The most important thing is a partner you can trust and is on the same mission with you. Everything else is easy. The second [piece of] advice I would give is that any business must be cash flow positive within 3 months. If it is not generating cash then it is not a business.
