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Today, Growth Hub becomes Clandon (www.clandon.com) 🚀 This has been a while in the making. Growth Hub was the right name for the business we started. Over the last few years the business has changed a lot, and the name no longer described what we had become. Today we build and run operations support teams for professional services firms and investor backed companies. That can mean finance and accounts payable, payroll and people operations, marketing operations, admin, CRM and systems, and data and automation, alongside our Deal Operations and Data & Research Operations teams. Some clients start with one function. Others now have Clandon teams across several areas of the business. The model is simple. You own the function. We build and run the team behind it. 👥 The new name fits what we do today and gives us room to keep building. There is a lot we want to do with Clandon over the next few years. We have a great team, some brilliant long-standing client relationships and a much clearer idea of the business we want to build. 📈 So it's a new name and a new website, but the same people behind it. It feels much more like the next stage than a new start. A lot of work has gone into getting us here, and I'm very excited about what comes next. Have a look around: www.clandon.com 🌐 And if you'd like to talk about any of it, drop me a message.

When was the last time you tested your carbon monoxide detector? You know you should. Once a year. Get the stool, climb up, press the button, maybe swap a battery. Doesn’t take long. But most people forget. (Sometimes even if it’s doing that little beep every now and again). That’s what background ops work looks like. We see it all the time: - Slides that look good because someone reworked them at 11pm. - Clean data because someone flagged the mess no one else noticed. - Clients impressed because the ops team quietly fixed the chaos before the meeting. It’s not flashy. It’s not “strategic.” But it’s work that fights fires. This year alone, our teams have: 👉 Rebuilt CRMs full of bad data no one had time to clean 👉 Rescued reporting pipelines that should’ve broken weeks earlier 👉 Flagged risks in decks that could’ve tanked client trust None of these made the quarterly review. No one gave out bonuses for “saved the partner from embarrassment.” But it is the work that stops the house from burning down.🔥 If you’re leading ops, here are 5 things worth checking this week: ✅ Is your reporting backlog quietly building up? That’s a pressure valve waiting to blow. ✅ When was your CRM last properly cleaned? Dirty data slows everything down. ✅ Are late-night fire drills becoming routine? That’s operational debt, not hustle. ✅ Are tasks piling up with no clear owner? That’s where accountability erodes. ✅ And yes, check your carbon monoxide alarm. 🔋 Because like the carbon monoxide alarm, when background systems fail, it’s already too late.

AI isn’t coming for your job. It’s coming for your outdated process. 👀 Too many deal origination teams won’t adopt AI. I know this because I’ve spoken to quite a few of them. And it’s not because the tools aren’t there (we use them daily). And it’s not because they don’t know how to implement it (we do it for them). It’s because their culture resists it. 🧱 And I get it, because change = putting your neck on the line. And financial services are notoriously cut-throat. But here’s the thing: AI doesn’t threaten good operators. It threatens the fragile workflows that have been duct-taped together for years. And let’s be honest…a lot of firms still rely on expensive talent doing labour intensive workarounds instead of fixing the engine. 🧯 Meanwhile, we’re watching leaner firms eat their lunch. 🍽️ They’re embedding AI into research. Letting global support teams automate prep. Removing 60–70% of the admin grind. ⚙️ They’re scaling output without scaling headcount, and moving faster because of it. 🚀 The truth is: AI and smart ops don’t replace good people (unless you’re Amazon). They replace the parts of the job that no one should still be doing. 🧠 And the longer teams cling to "how we’ve always done it," the more painful 2026 is going to be. ⏳

You’re tracking ROI...but the real killer is COI (the cost of inaction). Here’s why: Most ops issues don’t explode. They half-work. They get patched over. And they get left for another quarter... or five. But that slow decay? It costs more than you think. Especially when budgets are tight and growth isn’t on autopilot. Why COI > ROI Most firms ask: “What’s the upside if we fix this?” The smarter question in 2025 is what’s the cost if we don’t? Because when priorities compete, ROI tells you what’s nice to have. COI tells you what you can’t afford to ignore. 🧩 What COI looks like in the wild Here’s what we see every week: 30% of contact data goes stale annually 25% of business emails become invalid 60%+ of job titles shift each year 40% of company records degrade (M&A, shutdowns, rebrands) 15% of phone numbers become obsolete Now apply that to a real team. A VP on £300k a year... spending 30% of their week on admin or patching broken workflows. That’s £90k on work a junior analyst or automation bot could do. And that’s not a skills issue, it’s a systems one. Why it matters: When things half-work, nobody raises a flag. Until a deal stalls. Or a board asks why a 10-person team is still updating things manually. By then, the cost of inaction has already hit. The better question: Next time you're asking “What would it cost to fix this?” Try this instead: 👉 “What’s it already costing us not to?” That number is almost always bigger. And fixing it? Almost always easier than you think.

How to fix reporting that no one reads... ...and actually use it to win deals 🧠 Here’s the playbook we use with clients who are done with “reporting theatre” 👇 You know the drill... 📊 Someone builds a weekly report 📤 It gets sent to 10 people 📥 2 people open it 🤷 No one uses it to make a decision One client said it best: "We’ve got analysts spending 10+ hours a week on pipeline reporting... and the partners just ask for a summary in the meeting anyway.” So what’s going wrong? Here’s how we fix it — fast: 1. Start with the meeting, not the metrics We don’t ask “what should be in the report?” We ask: - What do you need to decide in your Monday BD meeting? - What are the 3 questions IC asks every quarter? - What does the IR team need for LP updates? Then we build the reporting around those decisions, not the other way around. 2. Clean the source 🧼 If your CRM fields are broken, your dashboards are too. We audit and fix: - Inconsistent stage logic (is “Qualified” before or after “Engaged”? 🤔) - Companies listed under 3 different names - Contacts with no owners - Stale opps still showing as active We bring it back to first principles: what gets tracked, by whom, and why. 3. Automate the boring stuff 🤖 Using Airtable, Google Sheets, CRM loaders, and Clay, we: - Auto-tag touchpoints from meeting notes - Track pipeline velocity over time - Segment accounts by activity, geography, sector - Flag stuck deals and contact gaps This saves teams 8–10 hours a week, minimum. 4. Make it human-readable We strip the noise and build reports people actually want to open: - What moved this week? - What’s stuck or stalled? - Where’s the partner follow-up? - Who’s gone quiet? One client replaced 5 Excel trackers with a single weekly Airtable view. Now? One click = full pipeline coverage. 5. Bake it into the rhythm 🔁 We tie reporting into real-world workflows: - Monday BD call = signal review - Friday wrap = stalled opps flagged - Monthly = LP metrics + fundraising funnel - Quarterly = clean, visual IC pack This is reporting as operational leverage, not admin overhead. — The result? ✅ Faster decisions ✅ Better meetings ✅ No more wasted hours on “dashboard theatre” You don’t need more reports. You need reporting that moves the needle.

You don’t need more meetings. You need better meetings. Here’s how to build a signal tracker that helps you find them 👇 We help clients build live, always-on trackers tied to key origination themes, surfacing the right companies, at the right time, for the right conversations. It’s part research tool, part campaign engine…and way more effective than trawling stale CRM lists or generic database filters. 1. Define the thesis Hint: Not just “Healthcare” or “Software.” Think: founder-led B2B SaaS companies in LatAm with recent US expansion hires. Or PE-backed multi-site clinics targeting the Midwest. Or legaltech firms post-Series A showing early AI adoption. The sharper the thesis, the stronger the signal relevance. 2. Identify the right signals We look for events that point to intent: - Leadership changes. - Recent fundraises. - International expansion. - Board reshuffles or passive directorships. - New hiring activity or tech stack shifts. - Signals that say: this company is about to move. 3. Build your signal stack We use a combination of tools: - Crunchbase, PitchBook, and LinkedIn for the obvious moves. - Clay for hiring velocity and domain activity. - Perplexity (in Deep Research mode) to uncover less-visible players. - BuiltWith for tech changes. - Companies House and Orbis for structural filings. 4. Enrich and structure Once surfaced, each company is enriched with: ✅ Ownership type ✅ Sector and region ✅ Deal history ✅ Key contacts (from Apollo, LinkedIn, or Clay) This turns signals into segments. And segments into outreach lists. 5. Plug it into your BD rhythm We tie trackers to weekly cadences: - Signal reviews on Monday. - Tiering by relevance. - Outreach sequences mapped to intent. - Meeting conversions and coverage tracked over time. This is how you turn white space into pipeline. Fewer cold emails ❌ More warm, thesis-aligned conversations ✅ Real alpha, not just activity. 🔁 Repost if your team is still working from last year’s list 👋 Follow for more from the Building Leverage series