“Fantastic work culture” with Ollie Smith CEO of ExpertSure

As a part of my series about about how leaders can create a “fantastic work culture”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ollie Smith, the Chief Executive Officer of www.expertsure.com. His entrepreneurial journey began at the tender age of 18 years old with a loan from the Prince Charles Trust for Young Entrepreneurs. Since those early days, he has moved on to successfully manage his current company for the last 3 years.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

A lot of failures! After starting life working for other people (albeit for a few weeks) that showed me I needed to have my own direction in life to be spiritually happy. The rest just followed on from that idea combined with the inability to be controlled by other people when could see that it was their egos making decisions as opposed to sound logic, or profit. I figured at least if I do things on my own there is zero chance of getting caught up in those kind of situations so I set up my own companies.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?

I guess the way my current companies culture was formed was pretty interesting. I came out to a marketing conference in Asia in 2013, I was super worried leaving before hand as I was unsure how the company would cope but after seeing how easy it was to work remotely it started the neurons off. I figured if the whole company could be remote we would have access to a global pool of talent, and as I seemed to be more productive I took a bet everyone else would be as well. Now the whole team is remote and have never been more profitable.

Are you working on any exciting projects now? How do you think that will help people?

As well as our flagship site ExpertSure, we have recently made an acquisition of a publishing brand to form the foundations of a energy comparison site in the UK called EnergySeek. It’s very new but we are working on some interesting ways about how we can help reduce the amount of fossil fuel energy our customers use though marketing automation, which shows the societal benefits of cleaner energy. We estimate that switching 25% of our potential customer base to cleaner energy could save 171,000 tons of Co2 per year.

Ok, lets jump to the main part of our interview. According to this study cited in Forbes, more than half of the US workforce is unhappy. Why do you think that number is so high?

While obviously very difficult to give an accurate answer, my best guess is a flaw with the perception of what makes a good leader. It’s too easy for non competent, but highly charming and charismatic (even sociopathic) types to gain power positions. Once these types are in control of teams they can wreak havoc, make people feel under appreciated, wrongly take credit for other people’s work and generally manipulate the process rather than taking a pragmatic approach to profit generation and correct decision making. This leads to the actual value generators to seek recognition elsewhere.

Based on your experience or research, how do you think an unhappy workforce will impact a) company productivity b) company profitability c) and employee health and wellbeing?

It depends on the industry, you can see how it happens that when the skill of the workforce is low, and it’s easy to replace workers that unhappy, unhealthy workers will have little impact on profitability or even be net positive as unscrupulous bosses push people too hard. However with highly skilled, or creative industries having an unhappy workforce will let your competitors run rings around you, and help point the nose of the company towards to the floor. I like to think of a company like a functional medical practitioner would look at the human body, you have to take a holistic view and make sure every cell is working optimally with everything it requires for the whole organization to thrive.

Can you share 5 things that managers and executives should be doing to improve their company work culture? Can you give a personal story or example for each?

Letting employees work sometime from home (or where ever)

Offering unlimited learning resources

How would you describe your leadership or management style? Can you give us a few examples?

The lightest touch possible to achieve goals. I believe in giving the team the end goal, and letting them get there by the best means necessary. That’s something I’m unlikely going to be able to figure out as each team member is the one who has the most accurate top down view of their own skills. I should only be focusing on hiring them to start with, once I’m confident and they are trained it’s off to the races.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Too many but my ex business partner Paul Bergeman who now directs marketing for Touch Financial has been a solid part of my business career.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

By ensuring that at least some of our product is directly benefiting the environment.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

Take a risk on something you love because you can end up failing at something low risk that you don’t.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I feel the only way the world can truly move in more positive direction is by first silencing your own inner mind. Once you get control of your ego, and are freed from it’s need to be right & judge (the root of most conflict) you will instantly transmute your life into still peace, which is highly contagious in itself.

Thank you for these fantastic insights. We wish you continued success!