Spotlight: Terry Lim

Building Growth That Lasts: Insights from Terry Lim

Digital marketing tends to reward speed.

Campaigns move quickly, results are expected faster, and visibility is often taken as a sign that things are working. In that kind of environment, momentum can easily be mistaken for progress.

Terry Lim has never been particularly convinced by that.

Not because speed does not matter, but because it rarely tells the full story.

Terry did not begin in digital.

His background was in training, in an environment where results took time and were not always immediately visible. It was a different way of working, one that did not revolve around platforms or short-term performance.

The shift came later, when that way of working stopped being enough.

“Digital marketing was something that was very foreign to us,” he says. “Nobody in the company knew how to do it.”

The gap was clear. Instead of working around it, he and his co-founder chose to build that capability themselves, not just to support the business internally, but to take it to market.

From the start, the ambition was there, even if the reality was constraint.

A small team, limited resources, and the need to make decisions carefully. Competing with larger agencies meant there was little room for excess. Work had to be thought through properly, and progress had to be earned.

Even the first breakthrough took time.

“We tried and tried… for many months. I think 7 to 8 months before we got a breakthrough.”

That early stretch shaped how the team approached growth. Not as something to chase, but something to build into.

In a space like marketing, where activity is constant, it is easy to mistake movement for progress.

More campaigns, more content, more visibility. But more does not always mean better.

At some point, the question shifts from what is being done to what it is actually doing. Whether it leads somewhere. Whether it contributes to something larger than the immediate result.

That is where the work begins to change.

Creative and performance stop operating as separate tracks, and start to make more sense as part of the same outcome. Not just to deliver, but to drive something forward.

That shift in thinking does not just shape the work. It shapes how he leads.

“There’s no point hiding or sugar-coating things… people just want facts. They want to know the truth.”

It is a straightforward approach, but one that has been shaped in less straightforward moments. During COVID-19, when revenue streams dried up and the future of the business became uncertain, what held the organisation together was not process or structure.

It was trust.

“When there is nothing left… no business, no revenue… what you’re left with is relationships.”

In digital marketing, there is no shortage of activity. What is harder is knowing what actually works.

It is more accessible than it used to be, but no less demanding.

“Anyone could wake up and start a digital marketing agency,” he says.

What matters is what happens after that.

“If you’re not prepared to go through the grind… don’t start.”

That same discipline carries through into how the agency continues to grow.

“Think big, start small, but build deep.” 

Mustard Seed Digital is still in the process of building.

There are still things being refined, still decisions being tested, still a clearer shape forming over time. The focus now is less on doing more, and more on doing things properly. Strengthening the team, improving the work, and understanding more clearly what drives results.

It is a deliberate way of growing.

In a space that often prioritises speed, that difference may not always be so obvious at first, but one that tends to show over time.