幸运飞行艇官方开奖记录查询 Who Archives - The Joy of Business https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/category/who/ Business coaching, advice and support - Julia Chanteray Thu, 18 Jul 2024 14:38:18 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 幸运飞行艇官方开奖记录查询 Mark Vaesen on working with Julia Chanteray https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/mark-vaesen-on-working-with-julia-chanteray/ Fri, 18 Dec 2020 16:16:36 +0000 http://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/?p=9891 Mark Vaesen runs Tomango and did some one-to-one business coaching with Julia Chanteray. Here, Mark chats with Jane de Vos…

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Mark Vaesen runs Tomango and did some one-to-one business coaching with Julia Chanteray. Here, Mark chats with Jane de Vos about the benefits the business has seen as a result of his coaching time with Julia. And why he’s still using the techniques today that increase his sales conversion rates to nine out of 10.

You can watch or read the interview here:

Hi Mark, tell us about when you worked with Julia and what it’s meant for your business.

Julia was our business coach for around a year and our time with her has made a big difference to our business. Many of the things that Julia had us implement are being used today in the company and continue to bring clients.

And what are your ‘can’t live without’ moments?

For Tomango, one of the main things Julia changed for us is how we do proposals. We would spend a lot of time writing proposals, they’d be sent off and we’d hope that we get a call back.

Instead, Julia got us to develop this process so it became a product in itself. We now run a diagnostic exercise with a potential client to find out more about their business. Then we create the proposal from our findings. It’s great because we have in-depth knowledge about the client, we are getting paid for our time and our conversion rates have increased.

Before working with Julia we’d win maybe one in every three proposals. But since using the discovery sessions, we’re winning eight or nine out of 10.

If you’re talking to a friend or colleague about Julia, what would you say was her style and how she works?

I’ve met quite a few business coaches and consultants over the year that do things by numbers. They take you through the same routine as every other business. Julia doesn’t do this.

Julia takes the time to find out about your needs, capacity, and appetite for change. And then she tailors it to you.

Plus, it’s always good fun. Julia’s very funny and every session with her has lots of laughter. We need more of that when we’re running a business.

I’d also say that Julia has an excellent breadth of knowledge. There’s lots of her content that I dip into both from the website and the email stories she sends, which are always very useful. Business Stories serve as great little reminders for the bad habits you might slip into.

Finally, Julia is brutally honest about what you need to do. But she’s also honest about herself and the things that she’s been through. When you’re working with somebody, and they are a bit vulnerable, it builds a real trust in the relationship. I’ve spoken to Julia about things that are as much personal as about business. And I’ll always count her as a friend as much as a coach.

Get Business Stories

Get the little weekly reminders and business stories that help Mark and thousands of other business owners here.

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幸运飞行艇官方开奖记录查询 Jo Lilford on working with Julia Chanteray https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/jo-lilford-on-working-with-julia-chanteray/ Fri, 23 Oct 2020 09:00:32 +0000 http://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/?p=9869 If you have been wondering what it’s like to work with Julia Chanteray, either on Remarkable or as a one-to-one…

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If you have been wondering what it’s like to work with Julia Chanteray, either on Remarkable or as a one-to-one client, read or watch this interview with Jo Lilford. Here, Jo talks to Jane de Vos about the positive impact it’s had on her business by working with Julia.

You can watch the full video or read the interview below.

Hi Jo, please introduce yourself and your business

I’m Jo Lilford and I’m an MD of a small specialist branding consultancy called Run, Jump, Fly Limited.

We help businesses to tell their story in the best possible way. So, we don’t deal with the visual part of a brand, it’s a bit more niche than that. It’s about the way an organisation communicates across all of their touchpoints.

How did you find out about Julia?

When I first met Julia, I was introduced to her by a peer in the industry that I have a lot of respect for.

At the time, I had too much work on. I was working flat out and stressing myself into an early grave, too.

How has Julia helped your business?

Julia has successfully managed to get me to step back and take a good, long, hard look at the way that I was working and running my business. I was saying ‘yes’ to a lot of work because I was frightened of turning away income.

That was really big for me, learning more about what it is that I want for my business. And the quality of the work I’ve had since working with Julia has improved a hundredfold. This has been a big impact for me.

What has been your ‘can’t live without’ improvement?

My ‘can’t live without’ improvement seem stupidly obvious but never really occurred to me. And it was that I was working flat out with lots of work that I didn’t want. Julia said: “you’re not charging enough”.

I have a lot of International Director level experience but was thinking, “writer’s charge X amount so I should be on a par with them.” But what I do is more management consultancy writing. Julia made me realise the value of what I offer.

Julia said ‘try doubling your price and see what happens.’ And what happened was the kind of work I didn’t want to do fell away immediately. The people who see the value in what I offer stuck with me and I’ve carried on attracting clients of that type.

I’m now working half the amount as before. I was working seven days a week, now I’m down to five-ish. It means I’ve got my family life back and that’s made a massive difference.

Imagine you’re talking to a friend about business coaching and Julia, what would you say about it?

I think the most wonderful thing for me is I’ve had a few coaches during my career. And a lot of them have been very ‘mood board and aspirational’, but not in a way that resonates with me. What I love about Julia is she gives practical, tangible advice that I can implement, fine-tune and implement again.

Julia is a very hands-on, practical person and that really works for me. I want real tools that I can apply immediately to my business.

What is the one thing that you would do differently?

The only I would do differently if I were in her place, is I kept losing the Zoom link. So, before every session, I would send it out again.

And she sent me a fantastic book on pricing but I can’t read it digitally as I don’t read well off the screen and it is too unwieldy to print out.

Julia has made sure Sweetspot pricing is available on paperback from Amazon but is glad you’re found it helpful for your business.

Book your Coffee and Cake with Julia

Find out more about working with Julia and book your virtual coffee and cake here. 

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幸运飞行艇官方开奖记录查询 How Mark Vaesen put up his prices https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/how-mark-vaesen-put-up-his-prices/ https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/how-mark-vaesen-put-up-his-prices/#respond Thu, 22 Mar 2018 17:35:23 +0000 https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/?p=8423 This is a guest blog by Mark Vaesen from Tomango. I’ll always remember the first time I decided to put…

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This is a guest blog by Mark Vaesen from Tomango.

I’ll always remember the first time I decided to put my prices up. It was one of the most nerve-wracking days of my business life.

This would have been around 2001, I was in my early twenties, and I’d only been working for myself for a year or so.

I’d managed to build up a bit of a decent base of clients, and I’d got to the point where I was incredibly busy but wasn’t earning as much as I would have liked. Things were still a struggle.

I KNEW what the problem was, I wasn’t charging enough, but like loads of other people who are just starting, I was grabbing any business I could, and the thought of losing a client (which I was sure was what would happen) was making me almost poo my pants.

But it had got to a point where I almost literally couldn’t carry on unless I dealt with my pricing. I was running at full tilt but not making enough money. And I’d been putting it off for so long; it was becoming more and more of a problem.

The big moment

So – I’m in a meeting with one of my biggest clients (looking back at it now, they weren’t that big at all, but at the time it seemed massive) and we’re talking about renewing their contract.

I’d been getting myself worked up into a state all morning. My stomach was churning, my heart was racing, and my palms were distinctly clammy. I knew the moment was approaching where I just HAD to say something. If I didn’t, I knew I’d hate myself for being a complete wimp.

They were going to react horribly, I knew it. The client was going to pull a face, say something nasty, and probably kick me out of their office for being so greedy.

So, I opened my mouth, and in a slightly squeaky voice and said, “I need to increase my prices, I’m afraid. By an extra £5 an hour.”

There was a brief pause.

“That’s fine,” my client said, “I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned it before.”

Damn it. I felt really stupid. Pleased, obviously, but stupid.

What Mark learnt about how to put up his prices

In the car on the way back, I vowed never again to be worried about putting my prices up. What was the worst that could happen? Ok, I might lose a client who couldn’t afford me anymore. But the extra income I’d get from everyone else paying that little bit more would easily cover anyone I lost.

Over the years I’ve put our prices up several times, making sure I did it regularly, having learnt the lesson of leaving it too long.

Yes, we lost some clients. But if they couldn’t afford to pay our prices (or, more to the point, didn’t think we were worth more), did we want to keep them anyway?

Where Mark is now

Now I’m comfortable with where we are with our pricing. I know we’re not the cheapest, but I know we give excellent value.

And as someone smart once said, there’s a big difference between price and value.

What Mark suggests you do next

If you’re struggling with your pricing, I strongly recommend reading Sweetspot Pricing by Julia Chanteray which is all about pricing strategies.

Julia’s book will help you get over yourself, and understand the right price to charge (here’s a spoiler alert: it’s probably more than you are at the moment).

As well as all the theory, there are some great practical tips for how to implement increases to make it easier on you than it was for me all those years ago.

It’s not just about pricing

Finally, there’s one other significant thing you can do to help with your pricing; look at your branding.

Having a strong brand identity helps position you in your marketplace, so if you want to charge premium prices, having the right brand makes all the difference.

 

You can read more about how important your brand identity is (no matter what size your business is) on the Tomango blog.

And if you’ve taken a look at your brand and decided it’s not working for you, get in touch, and we can have a chat about it.

A note from Julia

This article is taken from one of Mark Vaesen’s emails to his customers. I receive Mark’s great emails about branding and online marketing regularly and got a bit of a shock when I saw that he was suggesting that people read my book.

I then asked Mark if he would be happy for this to be a blog on my site, and he kindly agreed. If you’d like to take Mark’s advice and get a copy of the Sweetspot Pricing book, you can buy a copy here.

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幸运飞行艇官方开奖记录查询 What did Ryan do wrong? https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/what-did-ryan-do-wrong/ https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/what-did-ryan-do-wrong/#respond Wed, 10 Jan 2018 15:13:55 +0000 https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/?p=8158 Once upon a time, a nice man called Ryan came to see me. Ryan bought an e-commerce company about 3…

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Once upon a time, a nice man called Ryan came to see me.

Ryan bought an e-commerce company about 3 years ago. And he’d been trying to get this business to work ever since. He’d done everything he could to make it work. You name it, he’d tried it. Adwords, Facebook ads, newsletters, video blogs…even a podcast. He’d spent hours and hours each week trying to get his numbers up. He’d read tons of articles about online marketing, and followed their advice.

Sometimes he’d get loads of traffic to the site, and even get a quick flurry of sales. A couple of times he’d got reviews on much bigger sites and in print magazines.
But, it didn’t work.

Poor Ryan

Poor Ryan had spent 120k on all of this by the time I got to see him. And he’d pretty much run out of money and was becoming desperate.

Here’s what Ryan did wrong, and what we did about it.

This is the shortened version – it took about 3 months to sort all of this out, but I’m going to tell you about it in 5 minutes.

Ryan didn’t have a clear brand.

Ryan had inherited a lot of his stock, and the website from the guy he’d bought the business from. And he’d then added a whole load of extra stuff he’d sourced himself – the things he liked.The trouble was that it was a mess. The branding of the site appealed to an older demographic, but Ryan’s new stock was more likely to appeal to 25-35 year olds.

And the company looked slightly different on all the different social media sites. I could even see different versions of the logo, which I guessed had been reproduced in Canva by someone.
Ryan told me about how he’d got a marketing consultant to write copy, and I could pretty much pick out which ones she’d done because they were all in this super salesy upbeat tone of voice.
It was a bit of a mess.

Ryan didn’t know what price point to sell at

Ryan had lots of different product lines on the site. Now, of course, you want a spread of different price points, including some cheaper items to get people to make their first purchase so you have their details and can sell them some more expensive things later, but Ryan hadn’t thought about this at all strategically.

He had all kinds of things at all kinds of prices. Some looked ridiculously cheap and some looked expensive to me.

Ryan had been using mark up to set his prices, which he’d been taught by the guy he’d bought the site from. When he bought a new item, he took whatever he paid for it, and set his price at 2.15 times whatever he’d paid for it.

I explained that his pricing to his customers had nothing to do with what he paid for it. And we sat down and worked out 3 different customer avatars and set new prices for every item on the site. Apart from the 50% of the stock which I got Ryan to get rid of because it just wasn’t going to sell.

You couldn’t find anything

Ryan’s e-commerce site was like a teenage boys bedroom. Or maybe someone with a mental health problem and their house is full of all kinds of things they just can’t bear to get rid of.

As well as ditching a lot of the stock, we also de-cluttered the whole site. Old blogs, videos no one had ever watched, promotional campaigns which had run 5 years ago…Ryan spent about a week deleting and redirecting a whole lot of pages.

Does any of this sound familiar?

If you’re running an e-commerce business, this will definitely sound familiar. And if you’ve been creating a lot of content as part of your marketing, you might also have some old junk hanging around. I do – after one of my meetings with Ryan, I was inspired to also delete and redirect about 30 blog posts which I liked, but apparently, no one else was at all bothered about. Some of those older ones were pretty embarrassing.

But even if you have a pretty simple business, and don’t really do that much online, some of this might apply to you as well. How rigorous are you about reaching out just to people who fit your most desired client profile? Or do you just take whatever comes in?

And are you selling a number of different things, just in case someone wants something? In Ryan’s case, he’d bought in new stock when he liked the look of something. But I also see this with service businesses, where people offer a whole range of different things because they don’t want to miss out on someone who wants something slightly different.

The problem with this approach is that you never really get known for one particular specialist area, so you never get the reputation of being really good at something. You’re just okay at a few things. Or you end up doing some low price work you got recommended for, which you don’t really want to do, but it fills a gap.

Let’s cut the clutter

Getting really well known for one clear brand and one clear thing that you sell is one of the ways to fast track your business to be able to do the work you love, for people who love what you do. And of course, being able to charge good money for it too, so you can get to your success income.

Getting clear on your pricing is also part of this fast track process, and is probably the number one thing you need to do to get your business moving.

How to get some help to sort this out

We’ll be covering more of this in the Remarkable Business programme – make sure you’re on the waiting list to find out more about the next programme.

Quick note – in case you think that I give all this confidential information about my clients away, making me the worst business adviser in the world, let’s just be clear that there’s no such person as Ryan. He’s a mixture of at least 3 different clients, plus a bit of a man I met in a pub who tried to get some free business advice.

Photo credits – Matt Lemmon and Berwin Coroza

 

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幸运飞行艇官方开奖记录查询 Working in a crisis: Collaboration and Leadership https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/working-crisis-collaboration-leadership/ https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/working-crisis-collaboration-leadership/#respond Tue, 24 Oct 2017 12:24:30 +0000 https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/?p=7978   This is a guest post by Susi Doherty from Vervate. Susi has collected her thoughts and written them in…

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This is a guest post by Susi Doherty from Vervate. Susi has collected her thoughts and written them in this blog after she attended the Brighton Summit 2017, where I interviewed Paul Hutchings from Refugee Support – Greece.

Thank you, Susi, for the post.

Refugee Support

In 2015, Paul Hutchings was running a successful Brighton-based marketing research company called Kindle Research. Like many of us, he was moved by news reports about the growing problems for the refugees in Calais. Unlike, just about all of us, he did something practical about it. He hired a van and went to Calais for the weekend where he met John Sloan and ended up helping in Calais for six months.

In essence, Paul has never come back. Paul self-funded for the first 18 months and is now reliant on donations to enable him to continue.

What happened next?

In 2016, Paul and John established Refugee Support to help refugees in Greece and across Europe.

As of October 2017, Refugee Support has:

  • welcomed 500 volunteers from around 35 countries to work with them;
  • operated on six camps in Greece and currently on four;
  • are about to begin operations in Bangladesh with the Rohingya refugees;
  • developed strong working relationships with large humanitarian organisations and local communities alike;
  • worked to a very strong ethos of providing ‘Aid with Dignity’.

What we also learnt for business

Those of us that were listening to the interview had two hats on. The over-riding one was that of being moved by Paul’s journey and overwhelmed by hearing such a personal account.

 

The other hat we had on was our business heads. Paul and John took enormous risks, and still do, in establishing the organisation and the continued smooth operation of it. The following describes the lessons we learned along the way:

How establishing clear boundaries and a concise focus is so vital

Paul described how often they had been forced to say ‘no’ to individuals and organisations that have wanted help. Clearly, that remains a very difficult thing to say but they have learned that always saying “yes” can lead to an erosion of their guiding principle; ‘Aid with Dignity’. For example, instead of handing out resources to anyone that asked for them in an ad-hoc way, they started a system of shops and currency in the camps to promote a sense of normality and stability. Working out boundaries is a must.

How working with a business partner can be tough

Paul and John had a rocky start, with so many demands in so many ways on them both. However, Paul recounts that after the initial bumpy process, they have now found the best roles for themselves in the organisation – and roles that complement each other. It worked and continues to do so because they care so much and work hard to avoid the trap that many other volunteers fall into, of making it about them. It is about the refugees, the volunteers, the donors – everyone.

The mental toll

Staying grounded and positive in the midst of so much sorrow is not easy. Paul described how important it is to find your way to get through it and not hide it away. Share it, pace yourself, keep fit and healthy – these are all basic necessities to having the resources to keep going and maintaining a sense of wellbeing.

How important it is to empower others you work with

Refugee Support put everything they do through the lens of ‘Aid with Dignity’. For example, the kitchens on the camps are run by refugees. The language school is led by volunteers and staffed by refugee teachers. However, it is also important to remember the whole ‘community’ – donors, volunteers and locals too. Everyone needs to feel included and valued.

Knowing what success looks like

Clearly, for an organisation like Refugee Support, this is not an easy answer. The situation for refugees only seems to grow worse by the day. Maybe the answer we are seeking is in the individual stories of the refugee families that were helped by Refugee Support in establishing a life in another country.

How can we help?

Towards the end of the interview, someone asked, “what kind of skills Refugee Support looked for in its volunteers and how businesses can help?”.

Here is a recap and as like me, you are likely to be moved to want to get involved, I have put the relevant links under each one.

Volunteers

On the camps, there are literally all age groups and the basic skill is to be a warm person with a ready smile. Businesses could also participate by funding a member of staff to volunteer for a couple of weeks.

Give us your time 

There is a raft of people offering voluntary support in their own countries such as running a social media stream, designing goods, writing newsletters, etc. Paul mentioned they are currently looking for individuals to help with bookkeeping and to ensure as an organisation they are proactive in PR.

Contact Paul for further information – info@refugeesupport.eu

Donations

Money makes it easier to respond appropriately on the ground and it keeps both John and Paul going.

Donate here

To read more of their journey, stories and news, find them here:

Website: www.refugeesupport.eu

Instagram: refugeesupportgreece

Twitter: RefugeeSGreece

Facebook: RefugeeSupportGreece

Postscript by Julia Chanteray:

“That is a great idea of businesses being able to help by sponsoring an employee to go and help the Refugee Support team for a couple of weeks. Think what they would learn in terms of management and leadership to bring back. I’m pretty sure many of us could also spare an employee for an afternoon a week to help with the work that’s being done in the UK.

Thank you for suggesting Paul, to speak at the Brighton Summit, Susi. It’s too easy to compartmentalize our work and our desire to help others, so it was great to be able to talk about how the two intersect and what we can learn from Pauls important work.”

 

Photo credits to Liz Finlayson from Vervate

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幸运飞行艇官方开奖记录查询 What we learn from Sara Blakely, inventor of Spanx https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/learn-sara-blakely-inventor-spanx/ https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/learn-sara-blakely-inventor-spanx/#respond Tue, 12 Sep 2017 17:04:47 +0000 https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/?p=7850 Here are some thoughts on what we learn from Sara Blakely, the inventor of Spanx. You can see Sara tell…

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Here are some thoughts on what we learn from Sara Blakely, the inventor of Spanx.

You can see Sara tell her own story in the video at the bottom of the page, but here are my thoughts on what we can learn from her experience.

Who is Sara Blakely, and what on earth are Spanx?

Sarah invented Spanx, which are underwear for women which smooth out your shape, giving you a flatter tummy, hips or bum. She started with 5000 dollars in savings and is now a billionaire. Not bad going…what can we learn?

Understanding from the customer’s point of view

Part of Sara’s story is a version of the inventor’s story. She needed something for herself, couldn’t find it in the shops, and worked to make it for herself and others.

I think the fascinating part of Sara’s story, which you won’t find in your typical inventor journey is that she was able to understand her invention from the customer’s point of view. I like that she tested the garments on herself, on her Mom, her friends, and her potential customers.

She pushed for comfort, for real-world testing, for the elements which her customers would appreciate. And she didn’t shy away from talking about the underwear in a way that women would talk to one another about their knickers.

Wanting to stand out

Sara Blakely also talks about how she wanted her product to be different, right from the beginning. She did her research and noticed that all the packaging on all the women’s underwear was pretty much the same. Only the logo and the brand would change. And the packaging was all in neutral colours.

So she made her packaging bright red. And cheeky.

And instead of those airbrushed photos of ladies in their knickers, she used bold cartoon figures and cheeky straplines.

I particularly like

Higher power shorts

and

We put the power in your panties!

Sara Blakely - spanx packaging
Taking the buyer to the toilet for a demo!

Sara needed to sell her new product. Even if you have tons of money behind you for product design, prototyping, marketing and everything else, as a new business, you need distribution. You need someone to buy from you, and in Sara’s case, she needed big distribution.

Watch the video for Sara’s hilarious description of this moment, but basically, she got the buyer from a big department store (luckily another woman) to go to the loo with her so Sara could demo her product.

It worked, and she got a trial order. As a business coach, every time that I’ve worked with a client on getting this kind of distribution with big shops, it’s taken a lot of chutzpah and persistence to get a serious order. Asking someone with much higher power than you to come to the loo with you, takes a lot of courage.

I’m not sure this technique would work for every sales meeting, or if I’d have the nerve to do it, but it’s one to think about. Or you can have a read of the three price point pitching process method I use a lot with clients to help them to make sure that they win the work and maximise their value.

Here’s Sara Blakely in her own words

Let me know what else you think we can learn from Sara Blakely

 

What else can we learn from others?

Observing what other business owners do can give us some great inspiration and learning. And it’s not just the rich and famous we can learn from, I’ve compiled lots of examples of ordinary people running extraordinary businesses to share what I’ve picked up in business.

Here are a few to get you started:

How Nixon McInnes sold me a ticket

How Mark Vaesen put up his prices

Inspiring action with Simon Sinek

 

Photo credits – Thanks to Fortune Live Media on Flickr creative commons and Brett Player art director 

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幸运飞行艇官方开奖记录查询 Top tips on rebranding your company https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/top-tips-rebranding-company/ Mon, 20 Mar 2017 15:14:19 +0000 http://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/?p=6745 Here are my top tips on rebranding your business. Changing to a different name for your business can be scary.…

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Here are my top tips on rebranding your business. Changing to a different name for your business can be scary.  But sometimes the name that you started out with just doesn’t fit any more.

Susi Doherty used to run a photography agency called Brighton Togs.  As Brighton Togs, they’d done well, established a good reputation for all kinds of photography, done a lot of SEO to come up first in the search engines whenever someone googled “brighton photographer” and things were going pretty well.

But Susi and her gang of photographers had outgrown the Brighton Togs name.  For one thing, no-one except the gang of photographers knew that “tog” was slang for photographer.  And they were now doing most of their work outside of Brighton, so no one cared about where they were from.  She needed to rebrand, but was nervous of losing what she had built up

Susi and I had some long discussions about whether to ditch the name, how to protect the reputation and the SEO work, and of course, what they should be called instead.  A year later, I sat down with Susi to talk about how the process of rebranding the company to Vervate had gone.

Susi Doherty and her top tips on rebranding

Susi’s top tips on rebranding in a list

  1. Don’t be nervous, it will be fine
  2. Do make sure your web people do the right re-directs, and the SEO will be maintained
  3. Make a big fuss out of the rebrand so that people notice it
  4. Don’t take too long to come up with a new name
  5. Do use Scrabble letters as a way of coming up with a new name
  6. Do plan the rebrand as a re-launch
  7. Get advice and reassurance from someone who has done this before

My top tips on rebranding

  1. The name, logo and colours are important to you, but no-one else is particularly emotionally invested in them.
  2. Don’t just change the name without telling anyone
  3. Don’t spend ages agonising over a new name
  4. Don’t worry about the legal stuff, you can trade as anything you want, as long as the company name is on the invoices and somewhere on the website
  5. Don’t just change the name – this is your chance to rebrand completely
  6. Do make sure you go through all the links on social media, key referrers, guest posts etc to make sure the new name and rebrand are congruent
  7. Do it all at once
  8. Use a checklist and countdown to the big day

Photo credit – obviously I had to use a Vervate photo for this one.  That’s Susi Doherty in the middle, me on the left and Lynette Lowndes with us on Brighton seafront

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幸运飞行艇官方开奖记录查询 Seth Godin and the Purple Cow https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/seth-godin-purple-cow/ Thu, 09 Mar 2017 15:04:34 +0000 http://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/?p=6740 One of the most important books I’ve ever read about how to run a successful small business is Seth Godin’s…

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One of the most important books I’ve ever read about how to run a successful small business is Seth Godin’s Purple Cow.  I first read it about 17 years ago, but it’s one which I still re-read every couple of years and recommend to my business advice clients all the time.

Seth is a great writer on many, many things, and I often dip into his blog as a way of getting some brilliant ideas, and as a restorative when I need to remember what’s important in my mission to change the world by helping people to get better at running their business.

In Purple Cow, he talks about how to make your business remarkable, how to get it to stand out ahead of all the other businesses.

Here’s my take on his central idea of why you need to make your business resemble a purple cow.

Seth Godin and the Purple Cow

Photo credit – a Scottish cow (not me, or Seth Godin, or anything purple, but lovely) by Alexandre Maros

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幸运飞行艇官方开奖记录查询 Want to build something that lasts? https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/want-build-something-lasts/ Tue, 13 Dec 2016 11:40:06 +0000 http://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/?p=6477 Once upon a time, a couple of thousand years ago, there was a guy. He saw a lot of things…

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Once upon a time, a couple of thousand years ago, there was a guy. He saw a lot of things wrong with his society, and he spent a lot of time thinking about how he wanted to change things. This was before Facebook and Snapchat, so he had to go round just telling people about his ideas. Nowadays, he’d be able to do some video blogs, but he built his operation the hard way, by getting out there and talking to people.

He had some great ideas, and used a lot of storytelling to get his ideas across. He wanted people to be less prejudiced, and to be kinder to one another, so he told a story about a Samaritan who helped out a fellow traveller who had been beaten and robbed. It’s a clever story, because it shows that if you help people out, you get rewarded, and the hero was a Samaritan, although at the time, the Samaritans were a despised group who probably would have demonised by the Daily Mail today.

His ideas caught on fast, and he got a group of 12 people working for him spreading the word, and getting people organised. Eventually, the ideas spread across the whole world, and this started off one of the biggest enterprises in the world.

No, not Microsoft, Microsoft is tiny compared with the business this guy started, when you take into account total customer base x spend x customer loyalty x 2000 years.

What do we learn here?

Whether you think that Jesus was the son of God and that made his ideas fly, or that he was just a good guy with some great ideas and a dedicated marketing team (my personal take on it) there’s lot to learn from this, in life and in business.

Here are a few – do email me and tell me yours

  • A really clear message, summing up some ideas that had been around for a while in a succinct way
  • Getting key supporters organised in a close knit team
  • Not going for the sale first, but bringing people round to your way of thinking before asking them for anything
  • Being honest about your own doubts and humanity
  • Being remarkable
  • Great publicity events – that loaves and fishes idea is still going viral

More stories about business

I love writing about business, and I love using little stories like this one to illustrate what we can learn and apply to our own businesses.  If you’d like more of these, you can get them sent to your inbox once a week to help you boost your business.  Get your first instalment today…

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幸运飞行艇官方开奖记录查询 Why you need to read Seth Godin https://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/who/need-read-seth-godin/ Wed, 10 Aug 2016 14:15:10 +0000 http://www.thejoyofbusiness.co.uk/?p=5661 A long long time ago, and when I first set up in business for myself I discovered Seth Godin’s blog.…

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A long long time ago, and when I first set up in business for myself I discovered Seth Godin’s blog. I can’t remember how I found it, somebody probably mentioned it or linked to it. And I’ve been addicted to it ever since.

 
I’ve bought and read a number of his books since then, and the other day I started rereading one of his books Permission Marketing. I was surprised at just how dated it was, and then noticed that it was published in 1999. But it still had lots of really relevant tips and useful advice when I was re-reading it 16 years later.
If you haven’t come across Seth Godin’s work before, I would strongly encourage you to stop reading this and to go and read his work instead. The man is a million times better than me at writing blogs, though I do have more practical “how-to” tips, because that’s the kind of person I am.

Why Seth Godin is good

I was trying to work out why Seth’s writing was so important for me, and the millions of other people. Here are some of my thoughts on this, which are useful for any of us who want to be effective and/or influential online.

He writes short pieces

Most of Seth’s posts are less than 500 words long. He writes about one topic per post. And he writes very short sentences, in fact my English teacher, Mr Trahaerne, would probably say that these weren’t actually sentences at all.
I think that this makes the writing much more accessible and easy to understand. What’s interesting is that he’s actually putting across some quite complex ideas in these tiny posts.

He writes from the heart

You get the feeling that Seth really cares about what is writing about. He cares about the people that he is writing the blogs for. When Seth is angry about something, that comes across in his writing, and when he thinks something is good, he tells you why it is good, rather than saying “that’s brilliant” or some other superlative.

He’s not selling anything

Well, he is. He has a list of his books on the side of the blog, he’s regularly offering the chance to buy one of his courses, and he will outright ask you to do something to support one of his favoured charities.
But he doesn’t sell. He assumes a position of power and influence, and just lets you know that he has a new book out. There are no buy buttons or sales pages. Seth’s work is a brilliant example of how to give “value in advance”. He gives you all of this cool stuff, connects with you emotionally, and then once in awhile tells you, no mentions, that you have the opportunity to buy his new book, apply for his programme, or sign up for an online course.
I want to be Seth Godin when I grow up, as long as I can keep my lovely hair of course

Photo credit – thanks to Betsy Weber who seems to also have a thing for Seth Godin

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