SBS Blog > Helping to grow a positive community by Brian Costello

Helping to grow a positive community

By Brian Costello - Posted on 7 November 2024

Brian Costello, Director of HeadStrong, is an alumnus of our Help to Grow programme who went on to engage on a project with our MBA students. Here, he discusses the value he found in the programme and subsequent student engagement.

I established HeadStrong in 2007 as a sole trader with a view to providing therapy and training on mental health. Now, 17 years later we’re a team of eight who still do the core offering, however the bulk of our turnover comes from providing mental health support to schools across west central Scotland.

A friend of mine recommended the Help to Grow programme at Strathclyde and said he thought it would help me. When lockdown started I was still a small team – it was just me, a part time admin and a couple of subcontractors picking up work here and there. Post-Covid, as the team grew rapidly, I needed support in various aspects of business and leadership and I came to Help to Grow in late 2023.

The programme was excellent and, for me, it was the peer learning and support that really made it. Of course, the academic lessons were great and fascinating however it was the time we had to discuss our businesses together - sometimes through the lens of the academic learning - that really made the programme for me.

Having gone through the Help to Grow programme, we are much more aware of our core offering at HeadStrong and how we market and discuss that. Before, we were a bit scattergun and now we’re definitely more focused. We do need to get our growth action plan back out and revisit it again but that was a useful document for us to put together.

The community I found at Strathclyde was fab. I’ve had the opportunity to do other work with the university as a direct result of being involved in Help to Grow and I have both done business and had business from colleagues from my cohort. I hope those connections continue as it’s been a fantastic bonus on top of the learning.

The other university work I mentioned has involved being part of an MBA programme project which I found hugely rewarding. I was ‘interviewed’ about the business by the MBA students who were split into teams. Sounds like an interrogation but it really wasn’t and I very much enjoyed the experience. It was actually a really fascinating exploration into my business by a group of experts who wanted to help. Following a couple of weeks where each team had time to dive deeper into HeadStrong (without me needing to be there), each team then presented their findings, thoughts and recommendations on future strategy and current areas for focus.

I thought the whole experience was very rewarding and would happily take part again should the opportunity arise as it’s an excellent way of gaining fresh insights and ideas for my business from a mixed group who had a variety of corporate experience to offer.

Help to Grow has been so helpful in allowing me to gain fresh insights into my business but it has also been a means to engage with the wider Strathclyde community/ecosystem and both these factors have been a positive experience for both me and my business.

There are limited spaces available for Help to Grow: Management's next cohort starting on November 20 and the subsequent cohort beginning January 7 is accepting applications - please email sbs-helptogrow@strath.ac.uk for further information.