My best business decision

Just over a year ago, we opened our office in New York. We’d always got a lot of work out of the US and we believed we could get a lot more.

That said, we knew it was the kind of risk that could have brought the company down: the streets of New York are littered with the bodies of UK entrepreneurs who thought because they could speak English, Americans would fall at their feet saying, ‘I love your accent’. In our case, though, the gamble paid off.

We now have clients we could simply not have got if we’d been pitching from London.

About a third of our turnover is now from the US office and we’re finding work is circulating round London, New York and our office in Hamburg.

Nick Johnson, CEO, EVO Research (market research agency)