Susan BowenEarlier this month, I had the privilege of sitting down with digital content marketer Sergey Ross, to speak on his podcast ‘The Sergey Ross Show’. We spoke in-depth about both my personal and work life, the importance of curiosity and drive, and my role as CEO here at Aptum.
Here are some highlights from what we discussed on the show:
“You do your best, until you do better”
This is a quote I first heard from a prior boss almost 20 years ago. Since then I have carried it throughout life and tried to follow it as my mantra. As with any role within a company of high standing, there tends to be hurdles and complications, but what I deem to be one of the most important lessons in my role as CEO is to make fast yet stable decisions. This mindset and decision-making process has enabled me to make decisive actions, whilst also not compromising the integrity of the company. In order to do my best, I keep the opinion of others in the forefront of my mind. A company is built on teamwork so I feel you should never give a member of your team a task you wouldn’t want to do yourself and every relationship matters.
Helping our customers thrive
As a company, we’re proud of the relationships and trust we’ve built with our customers over the years. During our talk, Sergey asked me about our previous work with Shazam, and how our network infrastructure enabled them to rapidly scale to meet user demand. Back in the days when we mostly were using feature phones, we were content with a ten-second response. Whereas today, time is of the essence and customer expectations have significantly increased. Our network infrastructure helped enable Shazam to provide speedy content delivery to its clients. Shazam had the application and we enabled it to exist, thrive and scale to what it is today.
Staying balanced
In order to keep myself, and therefore the company, performing at peak level, I always put my family first and encourage a flexible working environment. I believe this allows me to tackle anything that’s thrown my way. The help from a supportive and equal team is imperative for a healthy work/life balance and as CEO, it’s my job to help those in my team flourish by encouraging them to carry the same mindset.
Personally, I don’t believe that being a person of influence has to be on a massive scale. For me, it is just as important to influence those around me, and help them to develop and grow. Just as my previous seniors and current mentors have shaped who I am today, it makes me proud to offer the same guidance to those around me. We continue to build upon our business success at Aptum with a shared goal in mind and this is how we influence the industry that we operate in today.
If you want to hear more of my discussion with Sergey, including my first few months as CEO of Aptum, why I’m not a fan of the “lean in concept” and my number one piece of advice to my 20-year-old self, you can access the full podcast here.