What working across countries and sectors has taught me about business

By Tom Dawes, Founder & Strategic Partner, Idea Factory

My career has taken me across the UK, India and markets in Europe, Africa and the Americas. It has also taken me across different kinds of business, from consumer brands and high street retail to advising shipping companies, AI start-ups and property businesses.

I have approached these businesses as an operator, adviser and investor. Investing my own money brings another dimension to strategic decisions. You have a personal stake in whether the thinking translates into results.

That variety has shaped how I approach strategy. You begin to recognise patterns: the importance of customer trust, the difficulty of scaling and the gap between a founder’s ambition and an organisation’s ability to deliver. You also learn how much the answers depend on the context.

An approach that succeeds in one country or sector can be useful elsewhere. But you have to understand why it worked before deciding what to take with you.

Learn the market before applying the model

Working internationally teaches you to question assumptions that feel obvious at home.

How do customers make decisions? Who influences them? What gives them confidence? How are relationships established, and how does a discussion become a commitment?

These questions matter because the same proposition can be understood differently in different markets. Even within a country, customer expectations, purchasing power and routes to market can vary enormously.

Working between India and the UK has made me particularly conscious of this. Neither is a single, uniform market. A strategy needs to be specific about the customers it serves and the conditions in which it will operate.

Experience gives you a starting point. Listening tells you whether it applies.

Understand what the customer is putting at stake

One useful way to move between sectors is to ask what the customer is risking when they choose you.

In high street retail, they are weighing product quality, service, convenience and value. With a haircare product, they are trusting a claim about performance. In property, the decision may involve a substantial part of their wealth and their family’s future.

For a shipping company, reliability and execution can be critical to a customer’s operations. For an AI start-up, customers need to understand what the technology can do, how it fits into their business and whether it delivers enough value to justify adoption.

Trust matters in each case, but it has to be earned differently.

That changes the evidence people need, the questions they ask and the way a business should communicate. It also changes what the organisation must deliver after the sale.

This is why I like to start close to the business: understanding the customer’s decision, the company’s ability to fulfil its promise and the commercial opportunity connecting the two.

Growth changes the questions you need to answer

At BBLUNT, I ran the company during a period of explosive growth in its bricks-and-mortar business. I subsequently led the product company through rapid online expansion, before its sale to Honasa Consumer.

Those were two distinct growth challenges.

A physical business depends on people, locations, capacity and the consistency of the customer experience. An online product business requires a different approach to discovery, distribution, conversion and repeat purchase.

The underlying expertise connected the businesses. The operating requirements differed.

That experience taught me to be careful with the word “scale”. Before pursuing growth, you need to understand what is being scaled, what could become a constraint and whether the business can maintain the qualities that made customers choose it in the first place.

Investing makes strategy personal

I have also put my own money into businesses. That experience sharpens your attention to the consequences of a decision.

You want to understand how the business makes money, where capital is needed, which assumptions carry the greatest risk and what must happen for growth to create value.

It also makes you think carefully about priorities. Businesses have finite resources. Every decision to pursue an opportunity commits time, money and management attention that could be used elsewhere.

Putting my own money where my mouth is has reinforced the importance of connecting ambition with a credible plan. A compelling story needs commercial substance, operational discipline and people capable of delivering it.

Relationships help you understand the business

Across countries and sectors, the quality of a working relationship affects the quality of the information you receive.

People need to feel able to tell you where the problems are: what customers are saying, which assumptions are weak, where delivery is difficult and what the leadership team has yet to resolve.

You earn that openness through preparation, curiosity and follow-through.

Working alongside founders and senior leaders has reinforced this for me. Their ambitions matter, but so do the practical realities facing the team. Useful strategy needs to connect both.

Use outside experience to ask better questions

A varied background gives you more than one way to look at a problem.

Consumer businesses sharpen your thinking about customer choice. High street retail makes you attentive to service and execution. Advising shipping, property and AI businesses exposes you to different investment cycles, operating requirements and routes to growth.

As an investor, you also ask how those decisions translate into sustainable value.

But each perspective needs to be tested against the business in front of you.

I use experience from elsewhere to ask better questions: What are we assuming? Where is the real opportunity? What would make this proposition more valuable? What needs to happen inside the business for it to succeed?

The answers should come from a close understanding of that business.

What this means for Idea Factory

These experiences shape how we work at Idea Factory.

We work with CEOs, founders and senior leaders to understand their strategic challenges, clarify the opportunity and determine how to bring it to life. That can lead to positioning, communication, IP or experiences, depending on what the business needs.

Working across countries and sectors, and taking responsibility as an operator and investor, has made me more demanding about the foundations of an idea. I want to understand why it matters to the customer, how it supports the business and whether it can be delivered.

The most useful thing you can carry from one market to another is a disciplined way of thinking, together with the willingness to learn again.

Tom Dawes is an entrepreneur, operator, investor and Founder & Strategic Partner at Idea Factory, working across the UK, India and international markets.

To discuss a business challenge, contact tom@logicmeetsmagic.com.