YBS
relationships . We will often run competitive processes with people we ' ve worked with before and we look for a cultural match – people that will work well in our business . It ’ s vital that we have people who have done this before . We want to learn from others , we want to take their experience to help us be successful .
“ The thing that ' s absolutely essential from any partnership for us is that they must help us to learn , and to be able to do that , they need to leave a legacy of us being able to do things ourselves . We don ' t want transactional relationships that give us a step change that then falls away . It ' s one thing to transform , but it ' s another thing to then optimise . And to be able to optimise , we need to be building our capability as we do it .”
David Morris concurs : “ We want people who can augment , people who can do things that we can ' t or people who can help us accelerate . We ’ re not looking for people to come in and do the stuff that we can already do , because we already have some skillful , capable people within the business .”
The inspiration to succeed So who inspires them ? “ I believe in the power of people and in creating environments that allow people to thrive ,” Sampson says . He is drawn naturally to people who have overcome adversity : to Stephen Hawking , who became the preeminent scientist of his generation despite battling personal adversity ; to Richard Branson , who built Virgin from the ground up and who today is quite pioneering about the way in which he nurtures his teams , giving them unlimited time off as an example .
Sampson also identifies with Steven Bartlett , the founder of marketing agency Social Chain and the youngest investor in the history of Dragon ’ s Den ( the UK version of Shark Tank ). He also has a podcast charting
168 February 2023