Founder of business coaching company MindAbility, Sam Eaton is now on her fifth business. By her own admission she’s “made a lot of mistakes, so my clients don’t have to.” It’s a reassuring approach from someone who was working in Wall Street at the age of 21, worked at Goldman Sachs and was part of the administrative team who led the BSB Sky merger.
“I’ve launched interactive television into the UK, taken a giant sofa on tour around the country for three months, re-engineered a flooring product from the States and introduced and sold it to the UK, founded and run an online PR, SEO company and taken a shareholding in a growing HR consultancy,” says Eaton, picking highlights from her career.
Rather than setting out to be a specialist in the HR arena, Eaton says HR found her: “My edge over other business coaches in this space is that I am first and foremost a commercial beast who is self-taught in the HR space,” she says. “I have self-funded my qualifications in gender diversity, studied neuroscience and psychometrics.”
Eaton’s company now helps HR and people related businesses and consultants scale their operations on their own terms. The business supports clients in the UK and USA primarily, as well as Canada, South Africa and the Far East.
Giving HR its Worth
Her career has also, unsurprisingly, given her a wealth of experience. As a shareholder in a growing consultancy, she has seen the impact HR can have on an organisation. She also believes the function is under-valued in a lot of instances and her business, with others, is determined to make this change. Some of her partnerships in America are helping to grow the profile of the function while she believes changes in the positioning of the function are also having a beneficial impact: “We need to get rid of the old labels and reputation of HR,” she says. “It’s not helping the community and thank goodness we are seeing working titles change.”
Eaton gains satisfaction both from the way the function impacts on the day-to-day workforce and in considering the possible future of work. She’s intrigued by the emergence of the metaverse alongside hybrid working arrangements and even wonders how technology such as holographic imaging may change the landscape.
Changing mindsets
Naturally she also gets a huge kick out of the successes she’s able to inspire in other businesses. “Our biggest successes are around changing mindsets to impact growth,” she says.
