Leigh Himel

Gravity Partners Toronto Provides strategic consulting and marketing communications services

HIMEL ON RISK: “In 2014, we had a client pull back their budgets quite significantly. We knew it was coming. Any big agency I’d ever worked for laid people off when that happened. But we take our business very personally; our staff aren’t there just because they’re going to get the biggest paycheque or the biggest office, but because we’re actually working with them to make sure their careers are growing in the right direction for them. So we made the decision not to lay anyone off. My business partner and I took substantial cuts in our bonuses and said, ‘Let’s look for some new business. That’s the way we’re going to solve the problem.’

“Soon after that, we won two significant pitches. Frankly, if we’d laid people off, we would have been in serious trouble. Because we made sure we actually had the right people to do the work, when we won the pitches we were able to ramp up on the business right away. It was kind of the best of both worlds.

“I feel like entrepreneurship is about consistent risk. I’ve always been the kind of person that gets really bored doing things

the way everyone else is doing them. If you watch the market, understand the underlying trends and act on them, that, to me, is not taking a risk.”

It’s the people who stand still who are taking the risks, because they’re all going to be out of business.” Leigh Himel