State of the Nation - April

This written State of the Nation is long overdue so rather than wait for the perfect moment when we have everything structured and lined up just perfectly, we thought we would give you a small ‘All is Well’ message.

It is more important to communicate, even when you can’t go into specifics!

Maldives

We are fascinated that just as we were sending 70+ people to a well-earned bit of rest and recreation, suddenly a sleeping volcano decides to wake up!

We have been going back and forth, speaking to airports, travel agents, air lines, watched online news-bulletins and television news, and the bottom line is this: Even now just hours before the majority of our European leaders are due to travel, we still don’t know if the air-lanes will be open.

Our Asian leaders will be able to travel but for sure some of the Europeans, including some of the corporate leaders, will not be able to.

We have decided that for everyone who is not able to go, we will schedule something later in the year. We don’t know where yet, we don’t know when. But you will not be sorry.

Having said all that, I guess we have to be philosophical about these things – not much you can do about it anyway. But we are disappointed we seem to have lost the chance for our Global Asian and European leaders to network and team build.

London Corporate Meeting

Our Founder, Jarle Thorsen, summoned key people to London last week. Dan Andersson, Thomas Nordlund, Kenny Nordlund, Sebastian Greenwood, Helle Schmidt, and people from Marketing, Product Development, IT and other pivotal parts of the business spent three- no, four- no five- er… some of them are still there, waiting for flights to get going again!

The key issue was prioritisation of IT and implementation strategies for the many important launches that are imminent. The list of things just around the corner is long: SitetalkMall, Oxford Programme, Bingo, SitetalkMed, Sitetalk itself, SitetalkCare, SitetalkTravel, SitetalkHealthcard, SitetalkTracker… And then add to that a couple of things we can leak that are pretty new, like SitetalkMobile (more details on this in next week’s State of the Nation), and some things that are even bigger (which we cannot tell you about yet)…

Let’s just say that we are stretched to capacity and being severely tested on our ability to coordinate IT and implement.

Other topics worked through included our imminent new office launch in Singapore, as well as our new IT Development office in Riga, Latvia, as well as our new company and office in Slovenia. Oh, and this is VERY COOL: we are at the contract stage to take on a senior person who will help us set up and launch the company, The Oxford Programme (Beijing) WFOE.

We also interviewed people for key corporate appointments at the top leadership level, people who can take us through to becoming a multi-billion Euro company.

We explored and scoped out regional expansion plans, including India, Brazil, Russia, starting to do due diligence and fact-finding on launching these massive markets and others.

Finally, we did workshops on Branding and Marketing, with a view to developing a complete corporate Branding Architecture, large enough to contain the phenomenal growth we are experiencing now and serve us well into the future when we are a top worldwide brand.

Conclusion

It is something I have said before, but it is worth reminding ourselves of:

We have come a long way in a very short period of time.

Just a year ago we were just a few hundred members that had seen Jarle’s dream and vision. Now we are rapidly approaching 100,000.

Just six months ago we launched a social network that collapsed very quickly. Now we have a robust, fast, designed-for-purpose platform that is developing every week.

Just four months ago we were on our knees, crippled by malicious DDOS attacks. Now we have one of the best back-offices in the industry.

And in the last few weeks we have seen unprecedented record-breaking sales, week on week, in both Asia and Europe.

We feel a real sense of pride and gratitude that you have joined us and stayed with us through this pioneering stage. Giving birth is not a passive restful affair. You have to push, fight the pain, go through the blood, sweat and tears, but it is worth it? Of course it is. Just look at your children.

Our business (that you own a share of) is growing up nicely now and transitioning to the next level.

Come to Budapest on May the 29th and see how far our baby has come! And help us celebrate our achievements and look to the future. I promise you will be amazed.

Very best regards,

Dan Andersson
President Enigro