Interview with Gordon Tredgold — International Business Speaker and Author

Gordon Tredgold is a business and IT transformation expert who has successfully delivered $100 million programs, run $300 million departments, and led 1,000-staff teams for Fortune 100 companies. Now, he coaches businesses and executives. He‘s also an international speaker and published author. His mission is to help people become better leaders who deliver amazing results.

1. Determination

Q: What are some challenges you faced when developing your venture?

The speaking, coaching and consulting space is drastically over populated, and it can be difficult to stand out and get seen. It’s tough to be able to show the value you bring and what differentiates you from the crowd.

This meant that it was tough to get paid opportunities, a lot of the early work was only for exposure, but if your not careful your business can die of exposure.

Q: Was there any point when you thought it was over? That you were going to fail?

Many time I thought it was over I was never going to make a breakthrough, and each time I got a sign to continue. I remember one time, about 3 years ago I got up and thought thats it I quit,

I’m done I’m never going to get a breakthrough, and about an hour later a friend called me to tell me I’d been selected by Inc Magazine as a top 100 leadership expert and speaker, which encouraged me to continue.

2. Flexibility

Q: As an entrepreneur how important has flexibility been in developing your venture?

You have to remain fixed on your goals but flexible in your approach to how you can achieve them. The journey doesn’t always go as planned, but as long as your making progress keep going.

Q: Delegation?

You have to both work IN the business and ON the business in order to be successful, and if there are parts you can’t do then you need to delegate them as they are important and cannot be missed.

Also figure our what your hourly rate is and any work that you can get done by someone else for less than your hourly rate, then delegate it. I have seen too may people who charge $300 doing their own admin, but it’s a false economy.

Every hour you spend doing $30 an hour job is a loss of $270 you could have got from doing paid work.

3. Imagination

Q: What was was your spark, where did it come from? As a renowned social media expert, what drew you to social media marketing?

My spark has come from my desire to share my knowledge and experience and I try to make the information accessible, and try to use different contexts to get the message across. The simpler context, the more resonant and relevant the context the easier it is for people to grasp complex concepts. So I am always working to come up with the right context to get the message across to as many people as possible.

4. Rebelliousness

I’ve always been a bot of a rebel, I refuse to accept a lot of conventional limitations, I always like to challenge peoples thinking, especially about what they think is and isn’t possible.

This has allowed me to deliver projects that many refused to take on, improve performance to levels way beyond what was thought possible. I did a project where we needed to reduce costs by 5% by getting people accept a pay reduction, many thought it was impossible, but I achieved that by offering people a longer contract but for a reduced rate. It created a win-win opportunity where many people could only see win-lose. Conventional thinking is often wrong, or outdated and it needs to be challenged in order to make improvements.

5. Friendship

It’s interesting that as we try to move onwards and upwards we get different reactions from our friends, some are supportive and will look to push you towards greatness, others will warn you of the risks, they will look to discourage you, but they are only playing their own fears, and you need to trust your own instincts. Your real friends will always be supportive, and you need to let go the naysayers.

6. If you could leave readers with one key piece of advice what would it be?

Aim high, start low, celebrate your success and keep going. Big success is built on a pile of small successes.

7. What are the 3 top productivity tips for entrepreneurs that you can share?

Find your most productive time and block it and use it, don’t let anything unnecessary steal that productive time away from you.

Keep your priorities to a minimum, when you focus on you much it dilutes your efforts and reduces your results.

Keep things simple, the simpler you can make things the more efficient you can be.