Following the departure from my previous business a couple of years prior, it was in early 2020 during the first UK Covid-19 pandemic lockdown that I started to reignite the passion and enthusiasm to start a new business venture. Over the following weeks I embarked on a voyage of discovery, to evaluate not only the type of business I wanted to start, but one where it had purpose and relevance in the new world.
This voyage proved to be a very interesting and revealing process for me, as it very quickly became clear where my purpose resided.
My value and purpose, and the value of my people network, was very much geared towards global professional and managed technology services, after the successful founding, growing, and selling of my previous global channel services organisation ITEC.
Once I had this eureka moment, I had a different challenge facing me, and that was how to build a better business in a challenging market that was being squeezed by significant geo-political tensions alongside a contracting global economy?
So, in early April 2020 the concept of Nebula was formed from a straw man perspective, and now I had to focus on the Nebula value proposition. I had already at this stage figured out what Nebula would do from a services and technology perspective, and I had a very solid handle on the processes and initial team I needed to launch the business. However, the challenge now was how do I make Nebula stand out in a crowded room?
Forming relationships
Subsequently I spent the following month thinking about people, and what is important to people when it comes to making buying decisions, alongside what people value in partnerships. I then amassed many hours watching and listening to YouTube videos and absorbing various podcasts from many different economists, psychiatrists, celebrities, and successful entrepreneurs. The one common, singular theme that was apparent to me in all these broadcasts was, that even with generational differences, people still very much value the relationship with people, and that was unlikely to change. This was especially poignant as we were amid a global lockdown at the time, and the interaction with other people was largely forbidden in the conventional way.
The other conclusion I came to was people were even more enticed to values and purpose when engaging with a brand. This is not just the brand value relating to the quality of your product or service, but also what your brand stands for as a business within the community you serve.
So, pulling together all those elements, I now had a concept of why Nebula was going to exist, where it was going to operate, and how it was going to operate. I now needed to determine the foundations Nebula’s brand values, which were to be authentic and genuine and more important achievable and sustainable.
Quality assurance
This was actually a very simple task, as I’ve always possessed a set of core personal values that I’ve always aligned to when forming the brand values of my business. They are focused around helping people, being generous and kind, honesty and integrity and an unwavering focus on resilience and quality.
First and foremost, my initial goal when I launched Nebula was to build a business and a brand that people, associated with quality. Secondly, it had to be a brand and a message that people could clearly understand and articulate. Ultimately, it was a brand that people could associate with.
In all honesty, my initial goal was relatively straightforward. There was no way I could have envisaged the subsequent rewarding journey over the past couple of years to be where we are today. Your brand is your people, and as we grow, so does our community of talent across the business, so it is important that we are collectively aligned to the same values and goals if we are to realise our full potential as a team.
Today, Nebula continues to evolve its proposition to remain relevant in a changing global technology services market. Our vision is to provide sustainable-conscious global IT services to our channel partners, underpinned by a purpose to source local, source responsible and source ethical.
Ross Teague
Ross Teague is CEO of Nebula Global Services
