Leadership Lessons From Working At 3 Unicorns with Tom Elvidge

It takes a certain type of person to trade being in a plush skyscraper in the middle of Manhattan for a trading estate on the outskirts of Leeds.

But that’s exactly what today’s 40 Minute Mentor, Tom Elvidge, did when he moved from Goldman Sachs to Uber at the time when it was a little-known new entrant to the UK market.

Tom played a fundamental role in taking it from a 3 person operation in a windowless room, to becoming one of the most recognisable companies in the UK.

There were a few high-profile bumps along the way, as with every scaleup journey, but that’s what is so great about Tom – he’s not afraid to admit it and in this episode he openly share the lessons he’s learned from both his Uber experience as UK GM and also his subsequent role as EMEA COO at WeWork.

We also got to discuss Tom’s new role as CEO of Arrival Mobility – a tech Unicorn that has set out to revitalise public transportation with cutting-edge, zero-emission electric vehicles .

We cover some great topics in today’s episode, including:

• What Tom learnt from his early consulting career, and the lesson he learnt early on about taking your work seriously, but not yourself.

• How being open-minded about the roles that have come his way has been so crucial to his career.

• And how being a good leader often means trusting others and giving them the space to make mistakes

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Tom for a number of years so I loved talking to Tom about his scale-up career. He’s always so honest and never afraid to attribute his success to the people around him.

This episode is full of priceless golden nuggets of advice. So, whether you’re in consulting or in a high growth scaleup, I’m sure you’ll learn a lot from his experience and brilliant advice.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode, so please do get in touch at james@jbmc.co.uk

If you want to find out more about Tom, check out his LinkedIn profile – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tom-elvidge-0b2b1514/

If you want to find out more about Arrival Mobility you can have a look at their website – https://arrival.com/

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