"The objective is not just to feel motivated for two days while a consultant or trainer is present with the team," Simon Andras says. "It's about changing the attitude, performance, and structure of the company long-term."
Andras has recently launched consultancy Simon Says Mindset, which has no plans of being another temporary motivational band-aid. Too often, corporate coaching follows a predictable and exhausting cycle: a speaker arrives, and the team enjoys a day or two of newfound motivation, only for it to disappear by Monday as everyone reverts to old, bad habits.
Andras, then, has built Simon Says Mindset to be a practical consultancy that will deconstruct where a business is stunted and then work toward a solution. And he knows firsthand that real business growth requires a fundamental shift in operational structure, not just a temporary adrenaline boost.
Bridging the Gap Between Vision and Reality
Throughout his 22-year career across real estate, fintech, and marketing – and while still serving as CEO of retail broker ConnextFx – Andras noticed a recurring theme: business owners have grand dreams, but they continually stumble when trying to translate those objectives into daily operations.
This disconnect inevitably breeds toxic management, communication breakdowns and stunted growth.
When you are deep in the trenches of running a company, it becomes nearly impossible to self-diagnose these structural failures. Andras likens this corporate blindness to relationship struggles.
"It's kind of like a relationship: when you have an issue, an outsider or third party can often tell you immediately what the problem is," he notes. "It's the same with a company."
The Antidote to Micromanaging
Running a hands-on consultancy while actively serving as a CEO might sound like a fast track to severe burnout, but Andras insists it is entirely manageable, provided you abandon one of the most toxic habits in modern leadership: micromanagement.
"Honestly, one of the main issues in companies is that C-level executives and heads of departments hoard responsibilities and decisions because they are afraid of being replaced," Andras says.
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Because top management insists on giving the final yes or no on every minor detail, they remain perpetually bogged down.
The antidote that his consultancy prescribes is aggressive delegation. Leaders must allow their teams to execute, even if it means risking failure. "Even if they make mistakes, they will learn from them," he advises. "That is how you grow leaders beneath you and scale the company, which in turn frees up my time to focus on other long-term projects and dreams, like Simon Says Mindset."
Diagnosis Before Prescription
The consultancy market is flooded with motivational speakers who have never actually held the corporate roles they are advising on. They sell the exact same canned programme to a marketing firm as they do to a recruitment agency.
Andras rejects this one-size-fits-all model in favour of deep, mechanical diagnostics. Before prescribing a solution, his team speaks with everyone from the C-suite down to the support staff.
"I've noticed that how a CEO sees the company versus how a support person sees it are two entirely different pictures," he says.
The view from the top, after all, can often be skewed.
Slaughtering Corporate Sacred Cows
For Andras, creating a highly functional environment means killing off a few common business practices without hesitation.
Annual performance reviews? "An employee shouldn't wait 12 months to be evaluated; it should be done at least quarterly. Annual reviews are nonsense," he says.
Protecting toxic, high-performing salespeople? "If top performers are toxic to the team, they can end up being the most expensive employees in the company," he adds.
The same blunt philosophy applies to promoting your best salesperson into a management role, which he identifies as "one of the worst mistakes companies still make." The skills that make a great seller are entirely different from the mindset required to lead. Furthermore, leaders must stop soft-pedalling critical feedback just to keep the team comfortable, and they need to stop keeping loyal but chronic underperformers on the payroll.
At the end of the day, true success isn't measured by the immediate applause after a team-building seminar. It's found months later when communication has improved, sales have increased, and a systemic problem has been permanently resolved.
