On this episode of Build Better Brands, Danielle Clarke is joined by Alexis Kingsbury who runs software and consulting businesses that help leaders grow their business and their teams with less stress. He is a long-term entrepreneur and has scaled several businesses and helped them to systemise and grow.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- My background was as a management consultant with some medium sized businesses and then I worked with some very large businesses like AstraZeneca, Honda and parts of the UK Government helping them to optimise their processes to achieve more with either the same or less resource, sadly in some cases. When I left the consulting world to set up my own businesses I had to take everything that I learned and completely unlearn it! Because a lot of what you do for large companies doesn’t immediately apply to small companies.
- There’s a temptation as an early-stage entrepreneur, to hold onto the concept or the idea that you have too tightly. Entrepreneurship is a really weird balance, you need perseverance and a thick skin when you’re getting rejections and friends and family are questioning your crazy idea, but on the flip side you need to be able to listen and change and pivot and iterate. The trick, or the solution, is to get passionate and focus on the pain and the customer. If you’re really clear on the people you want to work with and the problems you want to solve for them based on real problems they have, not ones you assume they have, then the solution itself matters a bit less and you can pivot and change that to find what fits and helps them. When you’ve got that you’ve got something magical that can then grow and turn into a successful business.
- We’ve had to rebrand a few times and it’s always incredibly painful to do. SpiderGap is an example of where the product and customer changed significantly and yet, when we reviewed it and spoke to customers, they liked the name and said it did stand out from the usual suspects of HR Solutions and so on. So, we concluded it was fine. You can spend so much time on renaming the business – and there are other businesses where we have changed the name and the branding.
- Often one of the most common areas for business owners and early stage entrepreneurs to let go of next is around sales. Perhaps they are the only sales person in the business, so when they get busy the sales pipeline slows up, which holds them back. Then they start to think about hiring, but that could hold them back from making sales and both things will impact money coming in. It’s a barrier for people to make that first leap. The mistake I and other entrepreneurs make when hiring a sales person is they assume the answer is to bring in a really experienced sales person to come in and solve all their problems. We did that, and that didn’t happen. We realised that at their old job they had a sales process, pipeline management, sales collateral and really clear sets of questions and things to cover. Making a mistake like that can cost you a year, but next time round you must implement a sales process.
BEST MOMENTS
‘At various points in my life I’ve started up 9 businesses, but it’s probably telling that, of those 9, I essentially have 3 still active and one where I’ve paused. The process of building a business is an iterative one, or at least it should be.’
‘As an entrepreneur, you do need to listen and have lots of conversations and that’s often one of the hardest things to do is go out there and have those conversations, but it’s only through that that you can truly pivot and innovate.’
‘One of the most important things when you’re looking at branding is messaging: What’s your description of the customer, what’s your description of the pains and frustrations that your customer has that you’re solving for them, and how do you succinctly describe what you do and demonstrate that?’
Continuous improvement is so valuable, like tweaks and changes over time add up to huge shifts I the results that you get over years. If you don’t document things and continuously improve them, you’ll get the same results and never grow.’
ABOUT THE GUEST
Alexis Kingsbury is the Director of Bridging Insight and co-founder of Spidergap, AirManual & Parentpreneur.
Websites: https://www.spidergap.com/ and https://www.airmanual.co/
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexkingsbury/?originalSubdomain=uk
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alexis.kingsbury
Twitter: @Alexiskingsbury
Instagram: @alexis.kingsbury
ABOUT THE HOST
Danielle Clarke is a Brand and Marketing Consultant, University Lecturer and Business Owner.
Since 2006 Danielle has provided brand design and marketing support for clients including Škoda, Gtech, UK Biocentre, UK Mail and GIRLvsCANCER Danielle is committed to helping brands that want to have a positive impact on people’s lives. She spends her time consulting and working with business owners to help them attract and retain their best customers.
Insta - @danielleclarkecreative | [https://www.instagram.com/danielleclarkecreative/]
LinkedIn - [https://www.linkedin.com/in/danielle-clarke-creative/]
Twitter - @D4nielleCl4rke | [https://twitter.com/D4nielleCl4rke]
Email - hello@danielleclarkecreative.com
Website: www.danielleclarkecreative.com
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