EG Solutions, the business-improvement venture focused on financial servies, floated on AIM in mid-2005. Since then, founder Elizabeth Gooch has seen her company grow considerably and its share price soar. But, she says, she didn’t always see herself in this business and it seems that a mixture of serendipity, hard work and listening to her own sound advice has led her to where she is now.

‘I had always had it in my head that I wanted to work for myself,’ says Gooch, who started as an in-house consultant at Forward Trust in the 1980s, a subsidiary of Midland Bank, before moving to building society Birmingham Midshires where she implemented ‘practical and easy-to-use solutions to complex problems’.

‘It was a very entrepreneurial business,’ says Gooch. ‘I used to go into companies and people would say to me “Oh we could do with one of you at our firm!”’ Enthused by the feedback, in 1988 she started the then-named EG Consultancy.

The business was started ‘from a pound’ and has since transformed into one of AIM’s top performers. ‘Originally we were offering advice for performance improvement in industry and the financial services sector. I saw a set of tools in industry that could be really beneficial if they were used in the financial sector, so we ended up developing a software package that would do it.’

Breaking down the glass ceiling

In 2001 she met chairman Rodney Baker-Bates, ‘more by luck that anything’, who told her that it was a ‘fantastic business’ and offered some much-appreciated mentoring towards the float in 2005 and beyond. ‘It’s been a long journey; a journey of different phases, but one that I’ve enjoyed,’ she muses.

‘If there was anything that I would have done differently, I would have floated a lot earlier and I would have sought out the mentoring that I eventually did earlier too. I thought that I couldn’t afford expensive management at the time, but there are methods – with non-executives and so on – that I could have used.’

When asked if her being one of the few female directors on AIM has affected her experience on the market, Gooch explains that she sees it as ‘a huge advantage to be a woman in business as a whole. The relationships you have with people, male or female, can be more open. Like everything, I turn it to my benefit and move on,’ she asserts. ‘I know they talk about the glass ceiling, but I’ve never seen it and I’d break it down if I did!’

Distribution is key

In terms of the future, Gooch says that ‘distribution is the whole strategy for us, it’s the cornerstone and the reason we came to the market.’ It seems that the visibility of being on AIM does have its advantages and for Gooch, the need for accountability is one of these. ‘It’s like dieting,’ she says, ‘if you have a cream cake, really you’re cheating yourself. Now we make promises to investors and we have to deliver. This has  given us a fresh energy and a fresh focus – it’s raised our game.’

Moreover, each employee at EG now owns share options in the company, an initiative implemented by Gooch to motivate and drive performance.

‘It means that the “What’s in it for me?” question is answered very quickly. I don’t run a cooperative, but the process of involvement is the best motivation you can have. It means that our staff own the results and they’re interested.’

Her aim now is to turn EG into a £100 million company within four years, a target Gooch sees as eminently achievable. ‘If I were to sum it up,’ ends Gooch, ‘I’d say that the mantra is “run the business as if our lives depended on it, so that it doesn’t have to!”’

Sound advice indeed.

EG Solutions	AIM	£1.5m	10.50p	0.00p
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