Jim Hart : UK needs to re-establish a strong work ethic

Name: 

Jim Hart

Role and company:

CEO, Europlus Direct Ltd and CEO, One Global

Company turnover (and most recent ebitda/most relevant profitability metric): 

£7.5m combined and £500,000 net profit 2012

Employee numbers: 

45

Growth forecast for the next three years: 

£9m 2013; £10.5m 2014; £12m 2015

In under 50 words, what makes your business distinctive in its marketplace

Europlus Direct works in a niche selling IBM Services worldwide whereas competitors can focus more on hardware.

One Global helps companies localise when they are selling globally, offering services including multilingual recruitment and translation to help companies market themselves overseas. Soon to launch international digital marketing.

What’s the big vision for your business?

The big vision for One Global is to have this range of services for our clients and to cross sell to each database of customers. With the addition of international marketing customers will be able to establish and enhance their global brand, localise their websites and marketing activities and find local language employees. For companies wanting to break into and develop in overseas markets One Global will be the go to company.

Current level of international business, and future aspirations:

95 per cent of our business in overseas. We have offices in Mauritius, Sydney, South Africa and USA. This is for Europlus Direct.

Our next target is to set One Global up in Germany, France and then Japan and the USA.

Biggest career setback and what you learned from it:

On returning from working and travelling overseas at the age of 28 having to start again at the bottom of the career ladder. 

I learnt that you just have to get on with your job and keep pushing and eventually you will catch up with your peers who perhaps did not take time out. And then hopefully you can accelerate your career – especially in my case with all the travel and languages – because you took that time out. 

So if you follow your passions – travel and languages were mine and try to keep those in your chosen career this should enhance your chances of succeeding. But there will be lots of setbacks en route; just depends how good you are at picking yourself up.

What makes you mad in business today?

Excessive red tape in HR and Health and Safety for instance.

What will be the biggest change in your market in the next three years?

On the One Global side it will be the improvements in Machine Translation and the technology in the translation field which will minimise the involvement of Project Managers

Can businesses in your sector/industry access the finance they need to grow? If not, what can be done to improve things?

Yes, you can if you are happy to go with Personal Guarantees.

How would others describe your leadership style?

Hire the right people, inform them of the strategy, support, encourage and trust and let them get on with their job.

Your biggest personal extravagance?

Spending money on sports equipment.

You’ve got two minutes with the prime minister. Tell him how best to set the UK’s independent, entrepreneurial businesses free to prosper:

Re-establish a strong work ethic in the country and ensure that young people don’t think it is all about X factor instant success.

Instead it is about hard work, having a vision and above all being tenacious.

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