FuseCo.

WHAT WE DO. FuseCo is a specialist coaching collective that serves the needs of founders and investors. But for our new followers (hello 👋!) what is it we actually do?! 1. Coaching. We have a wonderful set of expert coaches who cater to the needs of individuals, supports co-founders to bring their best to a partnership, and even for groups and teams. 2. Workshops & Training. We are communication specialists and support on public speaking, presentation skills, voice and all things interpersonal communication. We also offer group workshops on core coaching themes such as resilience and wellbeing. 3. Events. We also cater to lunch & learns, away days, and co-working space animation programmes. You can reach us at hello@fuseco.uk to discuss all this and more.

It's been amazing seeing all the posts about Gathr® - Formerly London Tech & PE Drinks over the past 24 hours. Congratulations to Mark Shepherd, Harry Davies and the whole team. We at FuseCo. are delighted to have joined the community recommended B2B services and software platform called GathrtoFind.com. Using its c.10,000 person community of leading investors, founders, operators and advisors, GathrtoFind.com has curated 130+ leading firms across all verticals a high growth company or investor would need to scale! Check out our profile and reviews on GathrtoFind.com! Looking forward to seeing plenty of you there!

Tamzin Foster and Fergus Leathem were absoluted delighted to host "It's not you - it's scaling!" for the future champions of climate change technology at Imperial College London's the Greenhouse - Undaunted: Tackling climate change with innovation. Thank you so much Jim Shaikh for getting us involved - we are privileged to work with these seriously impressive growing businesses in the cohort.

The "big blindspot" we see at pre-seed stage, time and again - is communication. So: big breath; and be honest. How many of these might you yourself have said...?! If so, it's time to call Fergus Leathem. Fergus is a partner at FuseCo. and our resident communications expert, working with founders, their teams, and the investment community on all things presentation: how you look, sound, and come across to others.

Tamzin Foster and Fergus Leathem met with founders at Northeastern University London's start-up hub on Crosswall to discuss the - surprisingly predictable - challenges of scaling a business from idea to IPO. The big themes of communication, leadership, teams and self are perennial, and have specific resonance at different stages of team growth. Recognising how humans relate to one another, and how that shifts as a company grows, gives us - in effect - a crystal ball: a view to the challenges that lie ahead, allowing us to plan, prepare and manage our working lives a little more gracefully. (Because after all, no one is having fun when the big cash injection and the new hiring spree somehow turns into stalling revenue!) Get in touch if you'd like to explore what you can expect on the journey, develop a language to talk about it and get the help you need, and to start working on strategies to address it all together. Huge thanks to Vaibhav Rustagi MBA for his hospitality and for kicking off an amazing new community at the Northeastern University London Start-Up Hub (side note: where there are actual bits of the old Roman wall available to view also!). Also to Tamzin Foster, Douglas Sexton, Fergus Leathem, Henry Cheetham and to all our wonderful clients in startups and across the investment community whose knowledge and experience has shaped and developed such insightful content for founders and their teams.

Tamzin & Fergus are really looking forward to speaking at Northeastern University London in the City on Wednesday evening... If you come along you'll find out what Steve McQueen's script from The Great Escape has to do with working in a start-up! Still a few tickets left, the link to book is below 👇 👇 👇 https://lnkd.in/eUd5c4TV

Tamzin Foster and Henry Cheetham had a wonderful day at Scale Space yesterday talking to staff from startups from seed to series A there about the growth journey and what that can look and feel like from the inside of a fast growing business. Our fundamental message? “It’s not you, it’s scaling!” - so many of our challenges are in fact predictable, and can therefore be prepared for ahead of time. If you fancy facing growth with a little more grace, ease and certainty, FuseCo. is here to help!

The biggest event happening next week? Probably this one below. Join FuseCo. Partners Fergus Leathem & Tamzin Foster at Northeastern University London's Start-Up Hub. They'll share their experience of working with founders on their journey of growth, the (surprisingly predictable) challenges they encounter and how to overcome them. All followed by networking, nibbles & drinks in the beautiful NE event space, with one of the best close up views of the London Wall you're ever likely to get! See you there!

What makes FuseCo. special? Tamzin Foster, one of our partners, offers her personal take on it, in the video below. "For me, it's firstly that we always, always offer a panel. No one coach is right for everyone, and no one coach is right for you, for all time. It's right that clients should have a choice. Unfortunately when so many coaches are working as a one man band, they're not always able to say, 'I'm sorry I'm not right for this,' or, 'Actually, this other coach would be amazing for you!' "We're big enough to offer a variety of styles and specialisms, but small enough to know each of our coaches as unique individuals. And as a professional team outfit, you don't have to worry about key man risk. "We love working with individuals, but we're also able to go a long way beyond that. We might start working with the CEO and then to end up coaching the entire leadership team. That means you don't just get the individual performance improvement, you also reap collective benefits across the whole business. Person and system. "And finally I'd say that we're professional coaches first and foremost. We're careful not to blur the boundaries between coaching and mentoring, which is something we see a lot in the industry. We don't believe these sit well together. We love what we do, we're proud of it, and we do it well!"

WHEN SHOULD YOU PICK A MENTOR VS A COACH? We had a fascinating conversation with a client last week about mentoring vs coaching. They're both valuable. But they do fundamentally different things. So how do you choose? * BENEFITS OF MENTORING >>> fundamentally, this is about sharing knowledge, contacts and advice. A good mentor should know their industry backwards, and be a phenomenal teacher. Ideally, they will introduce the mentee to useful contacts and give them a "leg up". You'd expect them to have phenomenal experience, and it's often a way of 'giving back'. CHALLENGES WITH MENTORING >>> however. Be aware that norms for people operating in your industry may have changed, and what worked once may not be relevant now. The mentee can feel obliged to impress their mentor, inhibiting their growth. Junior mentees may have a hard time stepping out of deference and into leadership, and senior mentees might need space to think more than they need another opinion. On the other hand... COACHING WORKS FOR >>> creating a space for your best ever thinking; developing self awareness and supporting new creative approaches to get the coachee "unstuck". Resolving stubborn development issues that feedback has failed to fix. In a relationship of equals, enabling the coachee to be sufficiently vulnerable to grow. Coming to the conversation without an agenda. Going beyond the surface to deeper levels of thinking and behaviour. COACHING ISN'T >>> technical training or advice! A coach won't tell you how to build a market forecast or value a business. They also can't do all the work for you. Coaching isn't necessarily an easy path; but it is an effective one. * A FuseCo. we believe that both mentoring and coaching have their place. But they're fundamentally different modes of interacting and being. We don't believe that one person can do both well at the same time. Yet we see a lot of people offering an uneasy hybrid, that does little to truly unlock doors for mentees or to foster agency in coachees. So at FuseCo., mentoring simply isn't a part of our offer. We offer professional coaching services. And we'll always be happy to direct you elsewhere when mentoring is required.