2023 Wins & Learnings from Team Disruptive
It’s been a big year over at Disruptive Thinking, with a number of exciting developments both with our own brands and with our clients, here’s a summary of some of our biggest wins and learnings from 2023.
Disruptive Thinking & Friends
The Daily Disruptor Network (DDN)
Having run DDN for nearly 2 years now, we’ve been laying the foundations for taking this to the next level in 2024. In the latter part of this year, we launched DDN’s new website, as well as its first-ever webinar. The DDN community is still going strong, and the Slack Group and newsletter are free to join. We’ve now published 34 issues of the DDN newsletter and the team working on these has found it hugely interesting to research new and in-depth topics every week. We will be releasing a whole host of exciting new features in the new year - get involved now so you don’t miss out!
Digital Firm
In 2023 we launched Digital Firm, offering niche marketing and CRM integration services to Accountants and Professional services firms. We’re really excited to see this develop further in 2024. You can check out the Digital Firm website here.
B-Corp
We’re extremely proud to have officially started our journey to becoming a B Corp this year. This has been a pipe dream for a long time and was top of the list when we sat down to talk about our values as a business. By taking a deep dive into the inner workings of how we do things, we’ve been able to implement improved policies designed to make a more positive impact on people and the planet. Our application has been submitted and now it’s just a waiting game to move things to the next stage - wish us luck!
Client Wins
It’s also been a huge year for all of Disruptive’s clients, but here are a few of our favourite highlights;
The Beautiful Business Podcast
Disruptive’s CEO, Yiuwin Tsang has personally hosted over 50 episodes of the Beautiful Business podcast for our clients The Wow Company. In each episode, he’s interviewed business owners and thought-leaders alike, delivering some very interesting insights (if we do say so ourselves). Have a listen to the episodes, here.
Beautiful Business interactive workshops
Team Disruptive have helped deliver nine interactive workshops for Beautiful Business throughout 2023, hosting about 500 attendees in total. This intuitive, powered by The Wow Company, works to support those growing Beautiful Businesses - those that have a clear purpose and stand up for what they believe in. These workshops have also bolstered their already fantastic thought-leadership profile as well as relationships with their clients and leads.
Benchpress
Another of our highlights of 2023 was assisting with The Wow Company's BenchPress event in March. We'd worked on the campaign back in the first quarter of the year, which all led to the in-person event in London. It was so much fun working as a team, doing an event in person and feeling the buzz and energy in the room as the results of the biggest survey of UK agency owners were delivered.
The Agency Collective, Atom Studio and Kay Elliot
Towards the end of this year, we’ve also started working with a handful of new clients. It’s been great to start working with our friends over at the Agency Collective once again. We’ve worked with The AC in the past and it’s felt like a great win to be able to hit the ground running and seamlessly re-integrate with their team. Atom Studio and Kay Elliot have also signed on as clients in the past few weeks and we can’t wait to get going on some exciting projects with these guys.
Wins & learnings from Yiuwin
“It's been a rollercoaster year for us at Disruptive this year. There are some real positives and excellent steps forward and some things that we might have done a little differently if we had the chance to do them again:
We've grown the team - hiring Ellie meant we've added to the team's skills and experience. I've always found hiring a nerve-wracking process, not because of the cost of mis-hire so much, although that is painful, but more around the effect of having someone new join the 'tribe'. The realisation is that you can only mitigate this so far and there's a point when you just need to realise that the culture you're building will be enriched by new people and I'm really glad to say Ellie has been a fantastic addition.
Our co-founder, Amy, left Disruptive Thinking and joined one of our clients. Amy had been with us from the start, so this hit us hard and personally, it was much more of a blow than I realised. On reflection, the fact that I didn't realise at the time shows that I didn't talk about it enough. I think I'd have gotten to a better place mentally more quickly if I had.
We've grown our client portfolio and started much more meaningful new business conversations this year. With a conscious effort around referrals and networking, the new business process has been much more dynamic and much more enjoyable. In line with this, we've also taken more time and made more effort to develop our own products and content which is paying dividends. Last year I was definitely working in the business rather than on it, this year there's a little rebalancing and I would have brought this about sooner if I could.”
Thanks to everyone who has made this year so successful. There are already some exciting things in the works for 2024, so keep an eye on our socials to be kept up to date with these. Wishing all of you a very enjoyable Christmas and New Year. See you in 2024!
