The trouble with wanting more

By Judith Silva

I started season two of The Gentlemen expecting more of what made the first season so much fun: beautiful estates, sharp suits, questionable business dealings and enough double-crossing to make trusting anyone seem like a fairly reckless life choice. 

It certainly delivers, but somewhere between the deals, threats and increasingly ambitious plans, something else started to stand out. Almost everyone wants more money, more territory, more control and more influence, only this time the ambition is stretching beyond the familiar English estate and into international territory. 

That shift changes the game because new markets bring new players, different power structures and people who don't necessarily care who Eddie Horniman (played by Theo James) is or what he has already achieved. The bigger the opportunity becomes, the more he has to prove, and the more his reputation matters. 

For businesses, there is a useful parallel here. Growth might increase your reach and open new doors, but it also changes who is watching, what they expect from you and how quickly an opinion can form. 

Growth changes more than your size 

In the first season, Eddie is pulled into a world he neither chose nor particularly wanted, and being the outsider works to his advantage because he watches, learns quickly and generally keeps his head while everyone around him is losing theirs. 

Season two gives us a different Eddie. He has discovered that he is rather good at this world and, perhaps more importantly, that he likes being good at it. The reluctant aristocrat has become ambitious, and the operation that once landed rather inconveniently on his doorstep is no longer enough because success has given him an appetite for what might come next. 

Businesses reach a similar point when success starts creating its own momentum. The next market looks attractive, a new geography presents an opportunity and what worked so well locally starts to feel as though it could work anywhere. 

Sometimes it can, but every step into a bigger market also expands the group of people with a reason to form an opinion about you. There are new customers to win, but there are also new employees, partners, competitors, regulators, media and stakeholders, each bringing different expectations and their own understanding of what makes a business credible. 

The lesson is that growth doesn't simply give you more people to sell to. It gives more people a reason to decide what they think about you, which makes reputation part of the growth strategy rather than something to consider once you've arrived. 

Your reputation doesn't come with a passport 

This is where the international expansion in The Gentlemen becomes particularly interesting because, at home, Eddie, Susie and the Glass operation have history, relationships and an established position. People know who they are, what they can do and, perhaps most importantly in their particular line of work, what happens when you underestimate them. 

Moving into new territory strips away some of that advantage. Relationships need to be built again, expectations are different and established players aren't necessarily interested in making room for an ambitious newcomer simply because they have been successful somewhere else. 

Businesses entering overseas markets face a considerably less violent version of the same challenge. You might have a brilliant reputation in Brisbane, Sydney or across Australia, supported by loyal customers, strong media relationships and years of brand recognition, but arrive somewhere new and you can quickly discover that nobody knows you. Sometimes the harder challenge is discovering that they do know your name, but what they associate with it is very different from the reputation you thought you were bringing with you. 

International growth is therefore more than an operational, distribution or sales challenge. It is a reputation challenge that forces a business to consider what travels well, what needs to change, which parts of the brand should remain consistent and what assumptions it may be carrying into a market that doesn't share them. 

The lesson is not to confuse recognition with reputation. People knowing your name doesn't mean they understand what you stand for, and the trust you have spent years earning at home may need to be earned all over again somewhere else. 

Trust gets more complicated as you grow 

For all the money changing hands in The Gentlemen, one of its most valuable currencies is trust, and that becomes increasingly apparent as the circle around Eddie and the Glass family expands. 

Eddie needs Susie, Susie needs Eddie and Bobby Glass needs them both, although exactly who trusts whom, and for how long, becomes harder to determine whenever another opportunity or relationship enters the picture. Their ambitions create more possibilities, but those possibilities also bring competing interests and new loyalties into relationships that were already complicated enough. 

Business growth creates its own version of this because maintaining a clear culture and reputation is relatively straightforward when leaders remain close to the decisions, relationships and conversations shaping the organisation. Add new offices, markets, partners, agencies and teams across different countries and maintaining that consistency becomes considerably more difficult. 

The logo might remain exactly the same, but the experience of the brand can become very different depending on where someone encounters it, who they deal with and whether the promises made at a corporate level match what happens on the ground. 

This is where communications starts doing some of its most important work because it creates the common thread between what an organisation says it stands for and what customers, employees, partners, media and other stakeholders actually experience. 

The lesson is that reputation can't remain concentrated in the people at the top as a business grows. The values, messages and behaviours behind it need to travel through the organisation so that growth doesn't create a widening gap between the reputation you want and the one people actually experience. 

Greater visibility changes the risk 

There is another side to expansion that The Gentlemen captures particularly well because, as the operation becomes bigger and the ambitions become bolder, the number of people paying attention increases too. 

Businesses generally want attention, and we spend a fair amount of time helping clients earn it through media coverage, stronger profiles, thought leadership and greater brand awareness. The complication is that visibility isn't selective, which means the same attention that carries your successes further can also give your mistakes a much larger audience. 

Expansion brings new customers and commercial opportunities, but it also brings different media environments, cultural expectations and stakeholder concerns. An issue considered relatively minor at home can land very differently in another market, while something said or done locally can become part of the global brand story remarkably quickly. 

That matters even more now because reputation travels faster than most organisations do. A customer experience in one country can be shared globally within minutes, an executive comment can cross borders almost instantly and a local issue can attract attention well beyond the market where it began. 

The lesson is that greater visibility needs to be matched by greater communications readiness. The more attention a business attracts, the clearer it needs to be about what it stands for, who its important audiences are and how it will respond when the attention isn't the kind it was hoping to receive. 

Reputation needs to keep pace with ambition 

There is nothing wrong with wanting the next market, a bigger client base or a stronger result because ambition keeps good businesses moving, and international growth can completely transform an organisation. The trouble starts when commercial ambition moves faster than reputation. 

Every new market gives you more people to reach, more opportunities to pursue and more room to grow, but it also brings more people deciding what they think of you. Long before they buy what you're selling, work with you or trust you, they are picking up signals from what you say, how you behave, the experiences other people have with you and whether all of those things consistently match. 

The Gentlemen takes that idea to a wonderfully extreme place, but beneath all the money, power plays and double-crossing is a useful reminder for any organisation with ambitions to become bigger or better known. 

If you want more reach, you need to keep building trust. If you want greater visibility, you need to be ready for greater scrutiny, and if you want the business to grow, your reputation and communications capability need to grow alongside it. 

Growth might get you into a new room, but your reputation will have a lot to do with whether you're welcomed back. If growth is taking your business into new markets, new audiences or simply greater visibility, your reputation needs to be ready for the attention that comes with it.  

Cole Lawson helps organisations build the communications strategy, media presence and stakeholder trust needed to support what comes next. Talk to us about making your reputation as ambitious as your growth.