5 top summer takeaways you should hear to grow your business - Part 2

0:00Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business, management, and leadership.

0:15Thanks to you, in under a year, we've hit 1 million listeners. And as an added thank you to our All About Business community, here's bonus episode part two of our top summer takeaways. If you haven't heard part one yet, we'll see you back here after. Many of us get bursts of excitement about new ideas, only to quickly lose interest. What might that pattern really mean? This is top takeaway number six from my conversation with Alex Partridge. He talks about living with ADHD, creativity and redefining self-understanding. So I started a podcast, a business podcast called Walk Away Wiser. and i remember i had this idea and i impulsively spent a small fortune on seven cameras similar to the ones here dismantled my bedroom dismantled my bed in my flat and turned my bedroom into a soundproof studio hired all bought all of the foam um tripods lighting everything it looked looked really no freezer at this time i can see a pattern here though yeah go on so you know hired a producer, booked all of these guests.

1:24And three days later, the postman knocked on my door and he delivered all of these boxes of camera equipment. And I remember just sat there looking at all of these Amazon boxes and thinking, I don't want to do this podcast anymore. I've lost interest in this podcast idea. And I didn't understand, you know, the juxtaposition between the enthusiasm three days ago compared to now. And the person I hired to be the producer looked at me and said when did you get your adhd diagnosis they recognized this boom and bust pattern right before i did even though i had experienced it so many times throughout my life that's why you call it boom and bust pattern yeah well you know quite literally it's the boom in the early stage where it's like this is my new life's purpose buy the domain design the logo you know three days later bust your interest is gone and that was the first time i really took those four letters seriously adhd and i dived into what adhd was and i got assessed shortly afterwards and i had the meeting with the psychologist and and she looked at me and said your adhd is clear as hell so that was all right that's a diagnosis yeah so so so that's interesting so you had this diagnosis what did you do with it well i used it to be a lot kinder to myself immediately because there was with these boom and bust cycles, this sort of glitchy dopamine system that is quite common with ADHD is very easy to, when something does come into your front and center, to get really excited by it and take steps to action something, whether that is buying the domain or even jumping into a new relationship, starting a job, starting a business, and then you lose interest in it.

3:10And what comes with that is a huge amount of shame. Because even though there is some humor in it when you're in that height you tell people about it you tell your family you tell your friends you tell people on social media it's like this is my new business idea this is what i want to do and then you lose interest in the idea and you have to confront that person because you'll meet them and they'll say how's that new idea going and you have to again say that i've lost interest in it and you ghost people or you hide away so there was loads of color and context that I was adding to years and years and years of shame that actually alleviated a lot of the self-esteem issues that I was facing simultaneously.

3:50I suppose so you're confronting yourself too, or you're being kinder to yourself by recognising that. So that sounded quite a helpful moment for you. Yeah, for me, as soon as I got the diagnosis, like many people do, I dived into Google and I wanted to know what is this thing I've been diagnosed with because I didn't know anything about it. and I googled it and it said ADHD is a struggle with it's a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by traits of impulsivity forgetfulness and disorganization it means you're going to struggle with disorganization you're going to struggle with being late it was all struggle struggle struggle and more struggle and it was enough to make anyone feel hopeless and I reflected and those things are there but also from my experience and speaking to so many people in the community who have ADHD.

4:43ADHD is also creativity and pattern recognition and being great in a crisis, being able to zoom out and see the big picture and spot details that other people miss, being resilient, being a great judge of character, having heightened intuition, being very loyal, being entrepreneurial. People with an ADHD diagnosis, you're four times more likely to start your own business. All of these things, I think, are a tremendous asset to society. So my goal was to balance the narrative around what it actually means to live with ADHD. Imagine working on a business for years with no sales at all. What keeps someone going in the face of that much rejection?

5:29This is top takeaway number seven from my conversation with Byron dixon he talks about persistence risk taking and the long road to breakthrough success so i came back started my own business and i guess he became a customer yeah he did but i fell flat on the face for the first few years because why nobody bought microfresh because it was about sustainability so i had five years with zero pushing at those doors that wouldn't open pushing those doors five years of zero turn five years zero turnover so we're establishing quite a few things about you by i mean chemist linguist but pretty determined i mean that's telling me yeah yeah yeah you were not a quitter though are you i'm not a quitter no i'm not afraid of failure as well so why not i mean because that's a haunt some people yeah i think naturally i'm a creative person when i say creative don't mean like an artist but i mean i like to build things so i'm not scared of starting again so i've never been afraid of everything crashing and And that's why as entrepreneurs, we take risks.

6:29And I take some big risks. Because if you don't try, you don't know. That's right. And the risk is, the bigger the risk, for me, the bigger the thrill. The biggest risk or the biggest failure is actually not trying, I always think. And I always say, I treat things like a plunge pool. So just hold your nose and jump in. It's going to hurt. It's going to... What you're expecting is to be cold. Sure. That's because of your time in Denmark. It's not always cold. That's right. Yeah, I'm not the sort to be standing around the edge, just dipping my toes in going, oh, it's a bit cold. I'll just go straight in.

6:59Saying that when I'm on holiday, I don't go into the cold sea. So in practice, I don't do it. But in theory, it gets me through. But in your business life, you do. So you were five years. So what was the sort of breakthrough then? When did it suddenly turn? The breakthrough was, I pitched all the retailers. Nobody was interested. And then I got a call from Next. Who were up in Leicester? In Leicester, yeah. And I'd been to all the people down here. M &S has saved me the whole lot. And they said, can you come and see us? And I said, yeah. And they said, can you go through that costing again? And I thought, that's an odd question because I've been here like two years ago.

7:31I went through everything. So I went through the costing, what it cost them to micro-fresh a pair of shoes. And they came back and said, right, we're going to run a trial. And that was 2011. So 2011, they ran girls back to school shoes with micro-fresh technology. And they said, we'll need your swing tags. And I said, yeah, sure. Thinking I haven't got any swing tags. By the time this comes around, I will have. So if you're watching the next people, you know. And they launched Girl Shoes in 2011. Back to school girls, really successful. And they came back and said, we're going to launch Boys and Girls the year afterwards.

8:00So 2012, all their back to school shoes were microfreshed and they still are today. And they're a hugely successful company. And they're a hugely successful company. And they'll see an important customer. So their calculation when they said, what do you run the costs? Was that they must have been losing product or there must have been some sort of trade-off where they could see by using microfresh. That's right. They would have better economics. That's right. That's right. And I don't know, maybe something happened the year before and they'd lost market share and somebody internally said, we need something, a differentiator.

8:30And they thought, where's that guy? So that was 2011, 2012. So he remembered you from two years before. Two years before, yeah. That's a real message there. I mean, I'm often telling people, it's not a question of if you're going to make the sale, it's when. Keep going, keep going. But this is a very good example of that. If like me, you run a business or manage a team, you'll know how important it is to hire great people. Over the last 65 years, Reed has worked with thousands of businesses around the world, helping them to recruit and to grow. This is what inspired us to create Reed.ai, your new AI hiring agent.

9:05It's here to save you money, to save you time and to help you get the right match. Whether you're hiring your first team member or your 50th, Reed.ai is here to make it easier. Try it free for 28 days, exclusively available during our beta period. Go to read.ai and get started. Read.ai, your higher power. We all know the frustration of trying to buy something online and hitting obstacles. What if the ideal customer experience could be summed up in just one lyric? This is top takeaway number eight from my conversation with Todd Unger, who talks about frictionless service, technology, and the future of customer experience.

9:50So much effort needs to go in and making that process smooth and effortless for the customer before you even get to the service part. And I think service is, it's not just the thing that happens at the end. We think of service as integrated throughout the journey so that you're answering questions and issues that people have along the way. So you don't really need to deal with them at the end. And if there is a problem, you do need to be prepared for that. And it's not just human interactions anymore. It's technology driven by AI that helps you detect those service problems. Yeah, we'll come on to that because I think that's so interesting, what's happening with AI and how that might change things.

10:34I mean, you use the word friction and frictionless, those words. I mean, that's a key thought of yours, is that friction? It is. It absolutely is. It comes in all different ways, does that? What should we be trying to do when we encounter friction as business people? I joke that there is an actual theme song for customer experience written by Ariana Grande in Seven Rings. I see it. I like it. I want it. I got it. and that's the job of business and chief experience officer. Can you sing that, Todd? I think that's very good. Say it again. I like that. She had no idea when she wrote it. I see it.

11:20I like it. I want it. I got it. I got it. She's talking about getting a gling for herself and her friends, and I think it's a perfect description of what people want from you when they're trying to buy something. I mean, have you ever been trying to do something online and you're like, I just want to give you my money and buy this thing. Why are you making it so hard for me? Go back to your own experience. Like you might be scrolling through something. You might see an ad that you think I wasn't even in the market for that. But of course, through targeting and through algorithms, those platforms know you're interested in that.

11:59Then you see in like three seconds, basically, whether or not they've captured a message that is going to get you to click to learn more. And if you're lucky, you're going to hit buy now. You're going to auto pay through Apple Pay or Google Pay or whatever. And you can literally be in and out of the door in 10 seconds. That's the objective of the 10 second customer journey. The temptation is to spend big. But what's the smarter first step? This is top takeaway number nine from my conversation with Kiki McDonough. She talks about starting small, testing ideas and building a brand carefully. I think the most important thing is to say, say, don't start big.

12:42You know, you say you've borrowed£5 ,000 from the bank or£10 ,000, whatever. Then don't think, right, great, I've now got that money and I'm going to do this, this, this, this and this. No, stop. My advice would be stop right there. and think seriously about who's going to buy your product, how they're going to buy it, what market are you aiming for, and do not charge into a website and then find that no one's buying from it because no one knows anything about you. So I would always say to someone, if you're going to spend that first small sum of money on making samples of your product, test it on your girlfriends, test it to have a have a party you know with 50 people and say can you tell me exactly what you think these are the prices it's a little bit of market research before you spend too much money because before you know it things are so expensive now it's gone the money's gone and you've got nothing to change well just buying the raw materials is so expensive well the money's gone because you've set up a website you've done this you've done that and everything and you're ready to go and you don't actually know who's going to buy your product so kiki if you're starting out as a new business, a new jewellery business, a young person building a business, and they want to move up into the sort of higher price points and build a brand that is maybe a premium brand.

14:07How would you advise them setting about doing that? So start small. Start with a collection, which you can call it a name or whatever, some name or other. And then you have to make 10 pieces. and you test drive it you ask your friends around or whatever and you don't price it to such an extent that you know that none of the people you're going to ask is going to possibly afford it once you've built a little bit of trust in your brand and people start liking what they're seeing and begin to buy it then you can do a few more things that are a little bit more expensive but i think if you think you're going to do that in the space of a year and a half then you need to step back and just you know just go a little bit slower because i think it i think you have to have that trust in your brand so when you say a collection so you have a brand your brand's kiki mcdonald then you'd have a collection maybe each year you'd do a collection or you'd say 10 pieces what would what typically if you're starting out typically would it be made it consists of well it depends what sort of jewelry designer you are what sort of jewelry you like selling but i think you should start with sort of 10 pieces that you think people who your friend you know your friends can afford or you maybe ask the friends with their parents and they might buy them for their birthday or something like that i think you shouldn't rush in and immediately design things 10 things and cost 10 000 pounds i mean i do four collections a year or five four collections a year five but I'm you know I've been going for 40 years so I know that the market is there for my brand.

15:46Many people think marketing is just about ads and branding but what if it's actually something far more fundamental to a business? This is top takeaway number 10 from my conversation with David Robertson Mitchell. He talks about the true link between brand marketing and cash flow. We talked about the difference between brand and branding. Marketing is is another area where depending on who you talk to in that industry, you will get their perspective on how the marketing works. So what's the difference between branding and marketing then, in your view? So brand is how you get that thought into people's heads.

16:25Marketing, the best description of marketing I've ever come across was from the London Business School, a gentleman called Tim Ambler, who used to be in charge of marketing for Diageo. And he did a lecture on how to talk about branding, about marketing to finance directors. And he said that the definition of marketing you should use is that marketing is the sourcing and harvesting of cash flow. Right. And marketers should know who's got the money out there, who's got the need, come up with products and prices and promotions and positioning and techniques. Sourcing and management of cash flow. Servicing, harvesting.

17:02Sorry. So come up with creative ways. Sourcing and harvesting of cash flow. harvest that cash out in the marketplace from the audience. It's there, you want to bring it in. And then deliver it to the finance director as cash flow. Now, to me, when you go and talk to a marketing person, you'll get their particular lens on their particular discipline within marketing. You'll get their particular metrics, which means nothing often to the business itself. But if you start to look at marketing as a sourcing and harvesting of cash flow, you're linking the effectiveness of marketing directly to something that matters really, really important to the business.

17:38But that's quite hard to then link to putting a Guinness ad on the telly, is that, I suppose? How did the finance director swallow this? Well, I think, you know, as long as you can start to demonstrate, you know, the overall mix of people are buying it and you're increasing your sales, then it links back to cash flow. But it does show that, you know, and I use this with various finance directors when I was in marketing roles. And, you know, the first of all, you explain it, and this sort of no one's ever explained marketing to me like that before well I haven't heard that explained like that before I think it's really interesting so the sourcing and harvesting of cash but also what it does I'm thinking is it gets the marketing people thinking much more strategically about what they're there for they're not there to make a pretty ad with Pink and I love her on it they're there to think about support the business how are we going to grow this business reach more customers and be super relevant thanks for listening to Summer Takeaways I'm your host James Reid chairman and CEO of Reed, a family-run recruitment and philanthropy company.

18:36If you'd like to find out more about Reed, all links are in the show notes. See you next time.