I didn't have a 17-year business plan. Thank goodness.

When I started CTL, I didn't have a grand plan to build a 100-person global communications business. There certainly wasn't a piece of paper showing where we'd be in five, ten or 17 years.

And I definitely didn't have “build a US business” written on a Post-it note above my desk. Although, if I'm being completely truthful, I have always dreamed of cracking America.

But more of that later.

I've always thought that if you plan your future too carefully, you risk missing the opportunities right in front of you. That's largely how CTL has grown. An opportunity appears, you recognise it, you believe in it — and then you go for it.

Our clients kept asking us to do more

CTL began in live events. We did great work, built close relationships with clients and got to know their businesses. And something interesting started happening. They asked us to do more.

Could we help with another event? Could we support the communications around it? Could we help engage employees during a major change programme? Could we bring together different channels and experiences to achieve something bigger?

These weren't simply requests for additional services. They came from trust.

Our clients knew we understood their businesses. They knew we cared about what they were trying to achieve. And, perhaps most importantly, they knew that when we said we'd get something done, we'd get it done.

That combination of close relationships, deep client knowledge and a “we can do that” culture became fundamental to CTL.

So we built the people, products, services and expertise to respond.

Today CTL has deep expertise across live experiences, strategic communications, organizational change, employee engagement, learning and creative content. That growth wasn't the result of a masterplan. It was the result of listening to our clients, earning their trust and being prepared to act when opportunities appeared. And those principles are every bit as important today as they were when we started.

Growth should make more things possible

I've never been particularly interested in growth simply for the sake of saying we're bigger. For me, the exciting thing about growth is what it makes possible.

It means bringing together brilliant people with different skills. It means investing in new thinking, products and services. It means tackling bigger challenges and doing more ambitious work for clients.

Seventeen years ago there were opportunities we simply weren't equipped to take. Today we are. And that's tremendously exciting.

But there's another side to growing a business, particularly one built around people and relationships.

Scaling what makes us different

As CTL has grown, one of our biggest challenges has been making sure we don't lose the things that made us successful in the first place. Because I genuinely believe CTL offers something different.

It's not simply the services we provide. It's our culture, our business model and our ways of working. It's the closeness of our client relationships. The depth of understanding we build. The willingness to take responsibility, bring different expertise together and get things done.

That's what clients value. It's what brings them back. And it's what we've had to learn to scale as the business has grown.

I don't want CTL to become a big corporate machine. I want us to retain the energy, responsiveness and entrepreneurial spirit that made people want to work with us in the first place. We have to keep investing in great people, giving them opportunities and trusting them to deliver.

In other words, the challenge isn't simply to scale the business. It's to scale the culture that made the business successful.

Which brings me to America.

I've always dreamed of cracking America

There's something enormously exciting about America.

It's a huge, competitive market and, for any ambitious agency, a real test of whether what you've built can succeed on a global stage. I've always wanted CTL to take that test.

But what makes this moment particularly satisfying is that we haven't simply picked America off a map and decided we ought to be there. It’s because our clients have already taken us there.

This year we expect to generate more than $5 million in US revenue, and we already have more than 350 American client contacts. That's not a bad place to start.

So we're investing behind that success, opening an office in Miami and building a dedicated US team combining experienced CTL people relocating to the States with talented new local hires. Their focus will be on expanding our American business, developing new opportunities and getting closer to the clients we already serve across the US. 

And it's important to say that this investment doesn't come at the expense of our existing clients. Our UK-based team remains firmly focused on the relationships we've built over the years, continuing to deliver the attention, creativity and support our clients know and value.

Indeed, the whole point of expanding is to make CTL stronger for everyone. We're adding people, experience and local knowledge while continuing to draw on the expertise of our global team. We're expanding what CTL can offer, not changing what our existing clients can expect.

We're also investing in our products and services, research, creative thinking and the infrastructure that allows us to deliver at greater scale.

And there's something else that makes me particularly proud. When I started CTL at my kitchen table, I could never have imagined we'd one day be creating opportunities for colleagues to live and work in another country.

That's a pretty extraordinary thing for a business to be able to offer its people.

Building rather than buying

We looked seriously at acquiring an American agency. On paper, it was an obvious way to accelerate our growth. We could have bought revenue, clients, people and a ready-made operation. But we decided to build.

Why? Because we know what makes CTL different. And we've spent 17 years developing a culture, business model and ways of working that have earned the trust of our clients. We weren't prepared to lose that simply in the pursuit of scale.

Building gives us the opportunity to combine the best of CTL with talented people who understand the American market and bring fresh experience, ideas and perspectives.

It's not necessarily the easiest route. But I believe it's the right one.

One CTL. A more global CTL.

I don't see this as exporting a British agency to America. CTL is already a global business.

Our US team will bring new people, ideas, relationships and opportunities into the wider business. Our existing teams bring 17 years of accumulated expertise and experience to America. The traffic needs to go both ways.

I don't want two CTLs. I want one CTL capable of bringing together the best people and ideas, wherever they happen to be.

And America isn't the end of our ambition. I hope that in five years we'll have grown across more markets, developed relationships with an even more diverse range of clients and continued expanding what we can offer.

Above all, I hope we'll be making a much bigger impact.

The next big bet

Looking back, the last five years have felt like a whirlwind of bets. We've invested in people, broadened our offer, developed new expertise and taken opportunities that would once have seemed beyond us.

America is certainly one of the biggest.

And yes, there are risks. There always are when you're building something ambitious. But this isn't a speculative leap. We already have the clients, the relationships and the revenue. Now we're putting the investment behind them.

I once said that one of my biggest regrets in business was not being bolder. Well, perhaps I'm finally taking my own advice. 

And looking back over the past 17 years, I wonder whether we did have a plan after all. Not one written down in a spreadsheet. But something much simpler. Do brilliant work. Listen to your clients. Build strong relationships. Back your people. Stay ambitious. Keep moving forward. And when a genuinely exciting opportunity appears, be brave enough to take it.

That's how we've built CTL. The difference now is the scale of what's possible. And I find that enormously exciting.

America is our next chapter. But the ambition is bigger than America. It's about continuing to build a business that creates more opportunities for our people, does more for our clients and makes a bigger impact wherever we work. And when opportunity knocks, I intend to keep opening the door.