Hey, it's Steve Cockram here.

Welcome to the Relational Intelligence at Work newsletter where every Tuesday you’ll get an email directly to your inbox from either Jeremie or myself.

This newsletter's primary goal is to support you on your personal growth journey, and to equip you with the skills and knowledge you need to excel as a leader.

For today’s message, I want to go way back.

Back to the origins of GiANT Worldwide and the humble beginnings of Jeremie and I.

So let’s dive in…

As we start to wrap up 2023, GiANT has worked with thousands of clients in over 120 countries. People across the world are using the tools and resources we created.

But it all had to start somewhere…

And our start was just over 10 years ago at a place called Hedsor Priory near London.

Here it is below:

It was 2013. I was winding down the consulting work I had been doing in America, and my family’s visas were expiring. It was time to head back to England.

At the same time, one of my close friends and confidants, Jeremie, was wrapping up his time running the leadership events Leadercast and Catalyst and starting to look for what was next.

Over the course of a few conversations, Jeremie and I started talking about the future.

What do you want in this next season?

Who do you want to serve?

What would you love to do?

As the conversations unfolded, we started to get a vision for what was possible for each other. And our visions aligned almost perfectly.

What if we could help leaders around the world get healthy themselves, and then multiply that health to everyone that they’re leading?

Soon after that, Jeremie, his wife Kelly, and his 3 kids decided they were ready for an international adventure and decided to move to London as well.

Arriving in London, our two families lived together at Hedsor Priory for just over a year.

And pretty much every day, sitting out back there on the patio, we would have these long, intense conversations… thinking about how we could lift up leaders around the world.

And in those conversations, we ended up discussing many of the things we struggled with in our professionals lives.

We talked about missed expectations, communication, productivity, leadership, and many more.

In the backyard of Hedsor Priory was where the majority of the tools and resources we use today were built.

We created 60-70 visual tools that were born from things that we struggled with and were learning in our own everyday lives.

As we were getting started, we offered to teach and coach people on leadership and performance in the workplace.

We used to carry our tools with us in a laminated spiral notebook and each page would have a visual tool on it.

And when we would go out and meet with people and organisations, good things would happen. We would have a positive impact on them and talk through problems with them.

But when we would leave, they would drift back into their old ways.

So we decided to put together what we would call “bootcamps” to begin multiplying our efforts and have people use our tools to go out and teach others for us.

Teaching people and teaching them to multiply we were good at…

But then we got to “How do we multiply multipliers?”

And pretty quick, we realized we needed an entirely different distribution system than what we’re used to.

Person to person was no longer going to cut it in the 21st century.

It wasn’t until 2018 did we fully realize how badly we needed to take advantage of technology and create a platform where we can make our tools easily accessible.

And because of moving over to an online platform, we’ve been able to go from Jeremie and I and a tribe of other GiANT advocates, to where we are today, in over 120 countries, impacting people everyday at the click of a button.

Our mission and vision, even early on, has always been to raise up liberating leaders in every city and every sector.

We want liberating minded people who fight for the highest possible good and change the culture in their own organisations.

And today, looking back on Hedsor Priory where it all began, Jeremie and I are humbled and honoured to have achieved our vision and are still pushing forward.

It has been such an amazing journey and we are beyond excited for the future.

To those new to us at GiANT and to those who have been with us since the beginning… from the bottom our of hearts, thank you.

Because all of this is only possible through you.

That's all for today's message. I hope you enjoyed!

Until next time,

Cheers from London!

Steve Cockram
Co-founder, GiANT Worldwide