How to Make Hard Things Easier with a Growth Mindset - w/ Graham Hobson (Founder Photobox, Moonpig)
episode
Growth Mindset Psychology: The Science of Self-Improvement
9 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 21 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Who is Graham Hobson and what sparked his interest in a growth mindset?
Well, today's short lesson we have Graeme Hobson, the founder and CTO of the Photo Box Group. During his time growing the Photo Box Group into the hugely successful business it became, Graham had a huge number of lessons. Perhaps his biggest lesson was the growth mindset. And this was taught to him by the CEO that they took on to grow the company as it scaled. And Graham admits that he felt regularly out of his depth, growing this company from zero to a huge exit, which is just a very uncommon thing. thing for many entrepreneurs. And he believes the main reason for his success was the belief in him from others and the fact that he was just always trying to learn new skills and developing his mindsets.
And you don't need to hear this all from me. Let's hear from Graham for this mindset masterclass.
My story is unusual in that I ended up being with Photoballs for seventeen years. So at that point it had moved on as a company. It was now running in twenty countries and we had fourteen hundred staff and I was part of an executive team of maybe ten people. So first of all, I knew they didn't need me anymore. And in fact I'd removed myself from the CTO role at the end of twenty fourteen because I realized that the challenges ahead were that we needed to To embrace mobile apps much more.
How did PhotoBox evolve from a startup to a 1,400‑person company?
We needed to kind of have a more coherent strategy around other companies in the group because we'd acquired other companies as well as Rumpeg. And we needed this kind of group CTO mindset. I felt that I'd exhausted my own skills and we needed to bring fresh thinking to it. So we went out and tiled a group CTO during 2014 and that person was in place. I then continued to kind of do what what All founders do when they put out class jury. You know, you run some blue sky projects, you figure out whether there's some strategic advantage in starting up new brands within the group and I was doing bits and pieces like that. So I was really on a glide path out, but I wanted to see the company sold. It was obviously nice for me if that happened, but the VCs we had had been in the company for ten years at that stage, and I felt like they deserved
Yeah. kind of an end point. It's it's a funding event, right? You bring in new investors or you go public. So effectively you're swapping out one set of investors for another, but it's a chance to refresh the team and to kind of reset the strategy and go to the next period of growth. So I was keen to make all of that happen, along with obviously our exec team, but steck off with that happening.
Why did Graham realize there was no single ‘silver bullet’ for scaling the business?
So we found uh a private equity firm that wanted to invest in us in twenty fifteen, but happened in early twenty sixteen. I ended up staying for another year because I was quite keen to maintain some corporate memory and hand over very smoothly. So it did feel like my baby, but not to the point where I was emotionally distressed to leave it behind. I was ready to leave it behind, but I wanted to make sure it was in good hands.
Back, you know, when you were first starting and trying to dreaming of getting two hundred and fifty pounds a day and then sort of having fourteen hundred stuff, it's sort of like a huge difference. But I guess if it if it's just slow, steady growth the whole time doesn't seem too crazy.
I look back, we kept on thinking there would be some amazing breakthrough product or service or, you know, we'll launch this and this will really double our revenues. And in reality, there was no silver bullet that massively increased our sales. It was a thousand small things and steady growth. And I think we kept searching for those kind of breakthrough moments. But along the way somehow we grew anyway.
Yeah. Is it kind of ever demotivating to kind of be constantly like, oh, this other thing will make us go huge and they're just never quite working in that sense? Or is it always like, well, if we aim for this huge thing, it'll probably be quite good at least.
What role did the CEO’s coaching play in teaching Graham a growth mindset?
What kind of mindset did that create?
I think I just learned that there are no kind of magic ways to grow. And like I said, if we come up with a new product and we said, we'll launch this and that's going to give us a million in revenue over the next year, we'd launch our products and it would do nothing.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Graham Hobson and what sparked his interest in a growth mindset?
0:01–1:10
2
How did PhotoBox evolve from a startup to a 1,400‑person company?
1:10–2:22
3
Why did Graham realize there was no single ‘silver bullet’ for scaling the business?
2:22–3:35
4
What role did the CEO’s coaching play in teaching Graham a growth mindset?
3:35–4:43
5
How did Graham handle the low‑point project failure and its impact on his health?
4:43–6:39
6
What habits did Graham adopt to recover his mental and physical well‑being?
6:39–7:28
7
How did Graham transition from a technical specialist to a team‑building generalist?
7:28–8:19
8
What practical advice does Graham give for applying a growth mindset to everyday challenges?
8:19–9:21
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Growth Mindset Psychology: The Science of Self-Improvement
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Psychology of Mental Strength: 3 Habits to build resilience, Inner toughness & Growth Mindset
A Growth Mindset Alone Won’t Make You a Better Leader: The psychology principles that will /wRyan Gottfredson
Master Finishing Things - Psychology vs Productivity, Perfectionism & Creative Constipation