GETTING TO KNOW YOU
Getting to Know
Gaia and Andrew Grant
What inspired you to start
your business? What are your
goals and values?
We are a husband and wife team
who have been working together
in some form or another for over
30 years, so moving into running
a business together ended up
being a natural progression. Our
passion over last 30 years has
been education, helping people
discover and learn, and we never
set out to start up a business – it
happened quite by accident. For us
it was actually a case of being in
the right place at the right time. As
strange as it might sound, we had
given ourselves a year off with our
young daughter to live on a beach
on a tropical island (Bali) and focus
on getting some balance back into
our lives. We spent our time there
writing, teaching, surfing and reprioritising. Someone suggested to
us that we should offer our learning
and development workshops to
conference groups that came into
Bali, and it all started from there.
We focused on how innovative
thinking and how to build an
innovative culture for personal and
organisational development.
The international clients (often
Fortune 500 companies) we were
dealing with loved what we did and
started inviting us to other locations
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September 2016
or back to their home base to work
with their teams, and before we
knew it we were an international
consultancy with offices and
partnerships in several countries
around the world. So I guess, to
answer the original question, we
were inspired by focusing on the
things we felt were most important
in life, creative thinking for better
relationships and personal growth,
and we managed to find positive
ways to support those priorities.
Our goals and values have never
been about building a business
for the sake of business or for
profit, they have always been
about how can we help people in
a range of contexts to best reach
their potential. How can we help to
contribute something to improve
society.
What was the driving force
behind your decision to
specialise in this area of
business?
Most people would probably have
heard the saying that if you focus
on what you’re passionate about
you will never work a day in your
life. From our experiences, we’d
like to add to that concept that
when you focus on what you’re
passionate about and when that
passion is purpose-driven, when
it’s about helping other people and
contributing to society, not only do
you love what you do but you also
develop this incredible drive to keep
doing it. We often find ourselves
working extremely long hours, but
because we love what we do and
get a great deal of fulfilment from
it we have an incredible motivation
that drives us. We’ve been working
in this area for 20 years and are still
going strong, so we figure we must
be doing something right.
What types of customers do
you help? What experience
do you have helping small
business customers?
We have worked with a wide
range of clients, from small
business customers and not-forprofit organisations through to
multinationals. We enjoy working
with small organisations as we
know there is a real need for new
ideas and practical support, that
the work that you do will make
a real difference. We also enjoy
working with the MNCs as we know
that they are in a position of power
and influence and they can make a
difference if we inspire them and
equip them. Hopefully we can be a
breath of fresh air in their profitdriven world.
Do you service other sectors
as well?