We recently had the privilege of interviewing Brendan Hooft, Founder and Managing Partner at ESPER. Brendan has over 20 years of experience and is a seasoned professional with leadership positions in multiple organizations.
At ESPER, Brendan Hooft intends to offer a powerful organizational state driven by a strong principle and unlock sustainable digital success. In this interview, Brendan Hooft speaks about his career journey, factors that sparked his interest in this domain, promoting a healthy work culture, overcoming challenges, and setting his business apart, along with offering valuable suggestions for aspiring entrepreneurs.
The Beginning
To learn how Brendan Hooft started his journey in this field, we first asked, “Could you start by telling us about your career path?”
Brendan Hooft responds, “My career path started at a young age and was driven by a need for real adventure and valuable experiences. It was generally highly social, active, and people-oriented. An example was being certified as a CWO-4 sailing instructor and coaching individuals from 16 – 24 across Europe. As an MSc in Business Administration student in the Netherlands, I then always combined my studies with work; and most notably I always found myself either working in an exciting technology domain or coaching technology in some form or another.
This passion continued, and after I graduated I joined Cisco in their Management Trainee Program. After that, I felt the need for more hands-on experience and I joined BT Global Services, and their Projects and Consulting BU for Global enterprise. I was then approached by Gartner in late 2014 to help them build their MEA business and stayed almost 9 years, until December 2022 in a variety of leadership positions.”
Spark Behind The Passion
Eager to learn the factors that influenced Brendan Hooft to start his company, we inquired, “What inspired you to develop the idea of your company?”
Brendan Hooft shared, “After spending over 20 years in the Technology domain, and most recently in the GCC and MEA region for Gartner I felt we weren’t collectively solving the real problem to capitalize on capturing enormous digital impact. We experienced and saw first-hand an extremely high amount of failure rates towards digital transformation, and related initiatives.
We experienced a growing disconnect between the executive office and the technology function which resulted in very poor strategies to leverage digital potential and subsequent execution. We found the problem to truly reside in lacking capabilities across Executive and Technology Teams, and importantly a disengaged weak culture that could promote and accelerate sustainable digital success. I wanted to solve this problem, it is personal.
We defined the issue and how to solve it in February 2023. This required extensive work after which we coined our concept creating ‘Digital Fusion’ – the only real organizational state that can power ongoing digital success. Welcome to ESPER Ignite™: The World’s Most Trusted Coaching Academy for Digital Teams.”
Changing Priorities
After years of operating, businesses tend to change their goals adapting to the latest market developments. To learn how Brendan Hooft’s business has evolved its priorities, we inquired, “How have your priorities in business evolved since you first started?”
Brendan Hooft replied, “The vision at ESPER is Unlocking Digital Success with ESPER Ignite™ and tackling the talent and culture issues that most experienced can relate to. This is an extremely high-impact, very unique, and scalable business model. This has not changed as its purpose and our ambition is strong. What has changed is how to drive exponential impact through growth execution. We decided to focus more and remove other services from our standard portfolio.
We want to be the only and very best in our field and decided not to dilute that proposition and focus on resources. We also had some major adjustments in our go-to-market. This is now 90% partner-led. We wanted to provide a platform for great talent and experienced digital leaders to become more. We now provide our partners with stability and a high level of financial reward and autonomy. Our partners own 50% of the business, and any consulting or sidewalk is theirs 100%. It’s a life of purpose we provide.”
Overcoming Major Hurdles
Facing challenges is an inevitable part of every business. We asked, “What are the most challenging situations that your company overcomes?”
Brendan Hooft shared, “The most challenging obstacle is finding current executives that can relate, understand, and prioritize investing in themselves and their people. Zig Ziglar put this belief eloquently “You don’t build a business, you build people, and then people build the business”. Agreeing with executives that 93% of their failures are due to inherent talent & cultural issues remains a challenge, and we are fortunate that some progressive leaders embrace this thought leadership. That said, we still find that only 30% invest in their Digital Workforce and if they do, it’s not intentional.
We believe that we found the answer to provide organizations with a real competitive edge. Sustainable. This is new so constant communication, branding and marketing is a priority right now. That said, we also remain very selective in who we work with as ESPER is conceptually for all organizations, but reality shows that not everyone is ready for this journey. We’re trying to structurally solve the problem, this is transformational change and this sometimes is not accepted by everyone. Some will maintain the current strategy of investing large capital into technology or outsourcing to traditional consulting. It may take time for the market to adjust.”
Setting ESPER Apart
To learn how Brendan Hooft ensures to set his business apart from the competition and add a unique touch, we asked, “What makes your company stand out from other businesses in your industry?”
Brendan Hooft replied, “ESPER Ignite is The World’s Most Trusted Coaching Academy for Digital Teams, and is the only Academy available. What makes ESPER truly unique is that we’re powered by Gartner’s insight into what skills are required for the future, but also our relationships with Forbes and Wharton that make us best-in-class in how we deliver and execute ESPER Ignite. This offering IGNITE was co-created, built for and with founding clients, beyond some world-class individuals we have at ESPER and our ecosystem.”
Measuring Success
We further asked, “What KPIs do you use to measure your business growth?”
Brendan Hooft continued, “The only measure we currently deploy is NPS – Net Promoter Score. An NPS score measures customer loyalty by looking at their likelihood of recommending a given business. The decision on this leading KPI is our belief that success can only be sustained if customer satisfaction and centricity are core to everything we do, and are. We are proud that we are currently operating at 100% and focus on keeping that intact relentlessly. We believe that this will help us retain our portfolio of clients, and help grow organically per client. We also believe this to earn us the right to onboard and invite more.
An important KPI for us because this drives our culture, behavior, and everything we do. We don’t take our clients for granted and always want to deliver 10x on any investment. Other traditional KPIs such as growth rate, profitability, and velocity come secondary if at all.”
A Healthy Work Culture, we asked Brendan Hooft
Focusing on employee satisfaction and promoting a positive work environment is paramount for the success of any business. To understand how Brendan Hooft ensures the same in his organization, we asked, “How do you build trust with your employees and boost productivity without causing burnout?”
Brendan Hooft replied, “There are two remarks on this important topic I would highlight. First, and foremost it starts with recruiting practices and prioritizing why, how, and where to source talent. At ESPER we don’t look at the CV, we look at the individual, their motivations, values, and belief system. We look at their traits. We run a rigorous process because this is truly critical and we know that hiring the wrong person is painful for both parties.
Secondly, I would say we deploy unconventional methods to ensure that everyone has “skin in the game”. We emphasized compensating for great work, success, and commitment. A good example here is that partners own 50% of their clients’ business.”
Words Of Wisdom For Beginners
Lastly, addressing the aspiring beginners, we asked, “What advice would you give to starting entrepreneurs?”
Brendan Hooft concluded, “Starting a new company and becoming an entrepreneur is excessively rewarding but also challenging. I would advise starting entrepreneurs to take the time to address why they want to take this journey with 100% commitment. This is fueling motivation but also resilience.
I would probably advise them to make sure they have clarity in what they will do to solve a really big problem – with proper go-to-market strategy work. I sometimes see concepts come by that simply don’t make sense. Lastly is overcoming your ego, being extremely open-minded, leaning into people in your network and just getting out there every day, with a smile.”
Follow Brendan Hooft on LinkedIn.
Find ESPER on LinkedIn and visit their website https://esper.global.
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