Kiwi Business Story: Myles Montgomery from Myles Montgomery Limited

Myles Montgomery is the founder and Creative Director of the Nelson-based Myles Montgomery Limited – a multidisciplinary design and visualisation agency working across the fields of architecture, landscape, product and interactive media. 



Location:  Nelson
Business Type: Technology and Digital Media
Founded: 2012
Number of employees: 4 
Current Business Situation: 25% revenue growth over past year. Solidifying business capacity over the next six months
Relationship with The Icehouse: Virtual Business Owner Programme (formerly Taking Your Business Forward) Alumni

‘Working for Myles is great! He is very passionate and forward-thinking which creates a fun and positive work environment. 

The biggest change I've noticed since Myles has completed his programme is how he sees value in clients that keep coming back for more work and building those relationships which benefits the business in the future.’ Sean, 3D Artist

I got my Bachelor of Industrial Design degree at Massey University Design School in Wellington. My father was an architect and in 2007 I moved to Melbourne to cut my teeth in a visualiser role with one of the major architecture firms. Funnily enough it was just as the GFC was happening, but I learnt so much from a group of experienced guys and that led a huge step-change in my development.

How did the business begin?

I founded the business in 2007. Often designers start out as freelancers or contractors and I was busy working between New Zealand and Australia on a variety of projects, so the business just sat dormant for a while. I spun back into it when my wife and I came back to New Zealand after travelling in 2012.

How is business?

Considering the year we’ve had; business has been good. Over the past 18 months Covid has reassured me that we've got a resilient business model. I know that people in the industries which we work in; architecture, real estate and so on, were looking at the wall, thinking ‘Well, this could be really troublesome for us,’ but we’ve experienced just the opposite.

The market has grown and swelled so much that there's is a need across the board for people with our services – especially with some of the legislation that's coming in around town houses, the changing of dwelling on properties, so there's going to be even more need for our services.

We’ve aligned with some good partners, and we’ve grown about 25% in terms of revenue over this last year. I’m hoping to solidify some more capacity in our business over the next six months, including recruiting two new members of staff.

What are your major challenges? 

A lot of our business has been predominantly Australia-based – due to my network base there – so not being able to get visit in the last 18 months has meant we've focused more on New Zealand and it’s working out very well.  
 
Covid hasn’t affected our ability to keep on growing, but it has perhaps affected productivity in terms of how we go about delivering things. We’re a small team but we work on quality over quantity. We try to focus on the upper end of the market, and to replicate those clients over and over. The top-end is swelling and growing, which is great for us, and there’s a rising at the lower levels, too, so there's more need across the board. 
 
One of the nice surprises for us is that our work is respected. It’s great to see that the people who have these skills are being used more and there’s a lot more respect for the content that’s being created – more so than five or six years ago. And our service is getting used across many different markets, not just architecture, but real estate sales and marketing, for example, who require pure content creation. 

What kind of support have you received from The Icehouse and are you looking to keep working with them?    

I did [Virtual Business Owner Programme] in August 2021. Great facilitators and cohort, and just an amazing experience all-round. The work we did with Kevin D’Ambros-Smith on customers and offering was fantastic – working out what we are as a business, where to position ourselves just to keep their flywheel moving, and how to effectively continue to play in the space that we are. I’d like to do some one-to-one coaching with Kevin in 2022.



How have things changed since working with The Icehouse?  

Identifying our values on TYBF was so important. If we're not living up to the highest standard or level of quality that we wish to portray, then we're not living up to our values. And vice versa.  

Being able to set and then disseminate our values company-wide, creates excellence throughout the organisation. If you can answer the question, ‘Am I adhering to the values of the organisation while I'm doing this work?’ then you’re really asking, ‘Is this good enough to send to the client?’. 

There were some easy things that we could put in place immediately, but you need to have the confidence to put some of those other things in place and how to do it in a way that's not daunting. 

The finance module was also huge for me – for small businesses your trajectory is based on cash flow and on how you can expand revenue, payroll, knowing what's covered with the expansion of work that's coming in and so on.  

So being able to put some metrics around what's been quoted on, what's in the funnel, what's the likelihood of that all coming through, and when is that likely to become money in your bank account was invaluable learning. It’s been fantastic in terms of putting systems in place. 

Understanding yourself as an owner-manager really resonated – how you can be your best self in the business, and then splitting that out to include how your best self can make a difference to the business that you’re in – even down to making sure that being fit, and able, and getting exercise and getting sleep will affect the business. You can't really do anything without those. So that's been something that I'm trying to bring back in. 

Follow the link for more information about Myles Montgomery and its range of services.