I usually start with brand, but the work rarely stays there.
I've spent my working life building businesses, leading teams and working with founders, and very few of the problems I've seen have had the decency to stay inside one discipline.
A business might come to me with what looks like a sales or marketing problem. Often it turns out that nobody has decided what the business wants to be known for, or they've decided and aren't acting on it. That's why I start with brand. It shows me who a business is for and how it makes money, and from there the work might move into the proposition, commercial strategy, customer experience or operations.
The work tends to fall into three areas.
I work directly with founders and leadership teams, combining an outside perspective with the experience of someone who's built and run businesses.
Direction
You've outgrown how you describe the business, or you have several good options and can only fund one. I help you decide what to do next, which usually means looking at your positioning, proposition and commercial choices.
Alignment
Sales, marketing and product have each ended up describing a slightly different company. I help connect brand, customers, teams and operations so they're working from the same idea of the business.
Execution
The decision was made six months ago and not much has changed. I help turn it into action and fix whatever's getting in the way, which can include doing some of the work myself.
I've been on both sides of the table.
I've run my own companies and been brought in to help with other people's. Not all of them worked, and I learned a lot from the ones that didn't, though I'd have preferred to learn it some other way.
The one I ran longest was Copper, a digital and CX agency. I led it for twelve years, and in the three years before exit we doubled revenue each year.
I've also worked with businesses in finance, healthcare, wine, construction and motorsport, some during Copper and most since. As one example, I built the proposition and messaging for a finance company, which played a big part in bringing in more than £15m of investment. If you want to know whether I've seen something like your situation, ask me.
Apparently I've always liked things to make sense.
As a kid, I arranged my clothes by colour. These days I build systems, mostly because good thinking tends to fade once everyone goes back to the day job. These came out of years of doing the work, and I embed them where they'll help.
■ BrandOps Framework®: Connecting brand strategy with how a business operates.
■ Marketing System Canvas: Treating marketing as one connected system.
■ VITAL Framework: Finding what's holding a business back.
Let’s Talk About Your Business
If something isn't working, or you're about to make a decision you'd like tested first, I'm happy to talk it through. Worst case, you lose half an hour and I learn something about your industry.