Duncan Shand is the founder of Young Shand, one of New Zealand's top creative agencies. Before Young Shand, Duncan was a freelance marketing consultant specialising in the online marketing space. As demand began to shift from traditional marketing to digital, he received more work than he could manage on his own - and Young Shand was born.

Duncan’s success lies in recognising when and how to adapt to the changing world. He fearlessly pivots to continue doing work that excites him and his team. In this episode, he shares the highs and lows of his business journey and the lessons he learnt along the way.

His journey with Young Shand is especially important for business leaders to hear because in reality, businesses often don’t get it right the first time. Duncan and his team’s vision to pivot from creative digital marketing into becoming an integrated advertising agency wasn’t successful on their first attempt. Instead of becoming immobilised by failure, he analysed what went wrong, learnt from his mistakes and tried again.

Now Young Shand is exactly what they envisioned, a full-service integrated agency led by a fantastic team, doing work that is exciting and meaningful.

Duncan embodies being brave in every aspect of his life, from running his first marathon at 50 to re-attempting the pivot towards his vision. Listen to the full episode to learn from Duncan’s experiences and find out how being brave can bring you a huge step closer to achieving your goals.

Duncan's Top 3 Tips

1. Be brave and think big

As business owners, we have to be brave. We have to set some big goals and not be afraid to set big goals. I think New Zealand business owners often can get caught up in the day-to-day running of their businesses. It's finding that time to step back, think bigger, and set some brave, lofty goals. And then articulate those, share them with the team, get everyone to buy into them. So they become real. They're not real if they're just living inside your head. They have to be shared.

2. Accept that we all make mistakes

No one gets it perfect. The road to success isn't a straight line, there are ups and downs along the way. We got up to 40-50 people at one point. We're at 35 now, but we've got 35 stronger, more senior people in the business than we did before. I think as long as you can accept that you're not perfect, and as the owner and the leader, listen to feedback from others and learn from failures. Put plans in place, adjust and calibrate.

3. Hire great people and hire diversely

Make sure you surround yourself with great people. The only little twist I put on that is when you are interviewing, make sure you have a lens so you don't get caught up in the hiring-people-just-like-me trap. I think we all have a tendency to hire people like us. In the early days, we had a lot of white - not middle aged, but white lads around the office because I could see myself in them. But we hired a woman Courtney, who looked after our HR stuff for a while and she really just held it up to my face and said, 'Hey, not a lot of diversity going on here.' So making sure when you are making a shortlist that you're including others, whether it's sex or ethnicity. We always make a concerted effort now, we have to have diversity on our shortlist. Sometimes we've been proactively hiring to recalibrate the diversity in the office. I think that's really important, hiring great people and hiring a mix of people.

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Debra Chantry-Taylor

Professional EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner

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