Like many other business leaders, Eleanor Bloem, founder and managing director of MindFuse Event Strategists, found their industry thrust into the tumultuous throws of extreme uncertainty when the dreaded COVID-19 led South Africa into a hard lockdown. Imagine rebuilding a Formula One car, not in pit lane, but as you hurtle around the track. That’s the challenge business leaders faced in this moment of disruption. The typical knee-jerk reaction is to panic, to try to make sense of the chaos and the indecision. MindFuse Event Strategists was one of those businesses, almost certain to fall victim to the pandemic restrictions. Yet through the fast thinking, the action-driven dedication of Eleanor, today, the business is thriving! Eleanor acted swiftly with laser-like focus and quickly moved to take her business online, relieving MindFuse of the heavy cost of office rental space among several other bold measures that insulated her business from the devastation that shook the MICE industry.
VISION-BASED MINDSET
Once MindFuse was stabilised, Eleanor needed to get ready to start thinking about the future, and this saw her harnessing technology to capture new growth opportunities. Growth through acquisition was deemed the most viable option. Eleanor, after deliberate consideration, consultation with her GROW Coach and what seemed like endless forecasting, settled on a business called Lua Pro. She immediately started work on making Lua Pro the business it is today – a fresh and exhilarating Virtual Event, Meeting & Technical Production company, that combines high-end, state-of-the-art streaming equipment with creative visual production in a glorious symphony of meeting proficiency and Event Production harmony. This allowed Eleanor to expand MindFuse’s reach by taking its carefully developed event strategy offering into cyberspace. This masterful use of a strategic partnership and vertical integration took MindFuse into a new era ready to handle both in-person, hybrid and virtual events.
Formulating a growth strategy guided by her GROW coach, allowed MindFuse to create an opportunity for an adjacent move to gain market share.
“GROW has empowered me to be more structured about the way I approach my business strategy.”
SIMPLY SMART BUSINESS
The hyped buzz and conversation around sustainability wasn’t just about ticking the right boxes. ESG (Environmental Social Governance) was fast becoming a vehicle used to create long-term value. It goes beyond good intentions, ESG is a smarter way to do sustainable business. It’s not just a one-time action plan; it’s an evolving road map that you can customize and collaborate on with your team to achieve real results. Such a complicated issue, riddled with jargon and legislative complexities, makes ESG tricky accept to communicate and buy into. Yet the need to get this right is becoming increasingly important.
As an early adopter by nature, Eleanor recognised the forward momentum that ESG was slowly starting to accumulate, she developed an ESG strategy communication product to solve the problem in a way that no one else can, with first-to-market advantage.
“Having to document and visualise our strategy and, set key objectives is what allowed us to reach our ambitious strategic goals.”
MindFuse will be the strategic planning partner for a wide range of corporate to assist them in communicating their ESG strategy to their key stakeholders. By creating a connection platform through live or virtual events designed to stimulate dialogue and share industry-specific thought leadership topics.
This ability for MindFuse Event strategists to first recognise growth opportunities and transform these into a material value is their competitive edge and what has contributed to its resilience and success post- pandemic and beyond.
GROW Impact guides business leaders, like Eleanor, to rethink their business strategies given the technology-driven transformation underway in their industries and markets, and make smart moves to build independent, profitable and enduring businesses.
