← James Reed: all about business
James Reed: all about business
1 Million listens bonus ep! 5 Top summer takeaways to grow your business - Part 2
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A
Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reid, the podcast that covers everything about business, management and leadership. Thanks to you, in under a year we have 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.
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B
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, tripods, lighting, everything it looked, looked really cool.
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A
No freezer at this time. I can see a pattern here, though. Yeah, go on.
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B
So hired a producer, booked all of these guests, and 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 before I did, even though I had experienced it so many times throughout my life.
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A
That's why you call it boom and bust pattern.
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B
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 she looked at me and said, your ADHD is clear as hell. So that was.
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A
That's a diagnosis. Yeah, so, so, so that's interesting. So you had this diagnosis. What did you do with it?
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B
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. And 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'm, 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, to years and years and years of shame that actually alleviated a lot of the self esteem issues that I was facing simultaneously.
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A
I suppose that you're confronting yourself too or you're being kinder to yourself by recognizing that. So that sounded quite a helpful moment.
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B
Yeah, I, for me, as soon as I got the diagnosis, like many people do, I dived into Google and I wanted to 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 are reflected and those things are there. But also from my experience and speaking to so many people in the community who have adhd, ADHD 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.
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A
Imagine working on a business for years with no sales at all. What keeps someone going in the face of that much rejection? This Is top takeaway number seven from my conversation with Byron Dixon. He talks about systems risk taking and the long road to breakthrough success.
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C
So I came back, started my own.
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Business and I guess he became a customer.
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C
Yeah, he did. But I felt flat on my face for the first few years because why? Nobody bought Microfresh because it was about sustainability. So I had five years with zero.
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A
Turnover, pushing at those doors that wouldn't open.
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C
Push at those doors.
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A
Five years of zero turnover.
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C
Five years of zero turnover.
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A
So we're establishing quite a few things about you, Byron. Chemist, chemist, linguist, but pretty determined. I mean, that's telling me.
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D
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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C
I'm not a quitter. No. I'm not afraid of failure as well.
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A
So why not? I mean, because that's sort of haunts some people.
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C
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 that's why as entrepreneurs, we take risks. Yeah. And I'll take some big risks.
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A
Because if you don't try, you don't know.
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C
That's right. And the risk is, the bigger the risk for me, the bigger the thrill.
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A
But the biggest risk or the biggest failure is actually not trying. I always say.
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C
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.
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A
What you're expecting is to be cold. That's because of your time in Denmark. It's not always cold.
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C
That's right. And yeah, it's. I'm not the sort to be standing around the edge just dipping my toes in, going, oh, no, it's a bit cold. I'll just go straight in saying that when I'm on holiday, I don't go into the cold sea. So practice. I don't do it. But in theory it gets.
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A
But in your business life you do. So you were five years. So what. What was the sort breakthrough then? When did it suddenly turn?
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C
Breakthrough was I pitched all the retailers, nobody was interested. And then I got a call from Next, who are up in Leicester. In Leicester, yeah. And I'd been to all the people down here, M and 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. Went through everything. So I went through the costing. How would it cost them to microfresh 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 microfresh technology. And they said, we'll need your swing tags. And I said, yeah, sure, thinking I haven't got any swing tucks. By the time this comes out, 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. So 2012, all their back to school shoes were microfreshed and they still are today.
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A
And they're a hugely successful company, also being an important customer. But so their calculation when they said when you run the costs was that they must have been losing product or there must have been some sort of. Yeah, trade off where they could see by using microfresh.
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C
That's right.
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They would have better economics.
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That's right. That's right. And I don't know, maybe something happened the year before and they lost market share and somebody internally said, we need something, a differentiator. And they thought, where's that guy? So that was 2011, 2012.
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So they remembered you from two years before.
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C
Two years before, yeah.
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A
That's a real message there. I mean, I'm often telling people it's not a question of, you know, if you're going to make the sale, it's when. 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, Reid 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. It'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, read 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.
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D
So much effort needs to go into 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.
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A
Yeah, well, we'll come on to that because I think that's so interesting what's happening with AI and how that might change things. And you use the word friction and frictionless, those words. I mean, that's a key thought of yours. Is there friction?
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D
It is it absolutely.
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A
And it comes in all different ways. Does that. What should we be trying to do when we encounter friction as business people?
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D
Well, 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 a chief experience officer.
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A
Couldn't you sing that? I think that's very good. I'll say it again.
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D
I like that she had no idea when she wrote it.
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A
I see it, I like it.
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I wanted. I got it, I got it.
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A
She's talking about a very good summary.
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D
Yeah, she's talking about getting 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. Then 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, you know, 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.
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A
The temptation is to spend big. But what's the Smarter first step. This is top takeaway number nine from my conversation with Kiki McDonagh. She talks about starting small, testing ideas and building a brand carefully.
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E
I think the most important thing is to stay say, don't start big. You know, you've say you've borrowed 5,000 pounds from the bank or 10,000, whatever. You 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 make, spend that first initial small sum of money on making samples of your product, test it on your girlfriends, test it, 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, right? And you've got nothing to do, just.
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A
Buying the raw materials is so expensive.
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E
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.
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A
So Kiki, if you're starting out in as a new business, a new jewelry 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, how, how would you advise them setting about doing that?
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E
So start small. Start with a collection, which you can call it, you can call it a name or whatever, some name or other, and then you have to make. So you 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.
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A
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. So you say 10 pieces?
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E
Yes. I mean, if you're starting out, what.
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A
Typically would it be it consists of?
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E
Well, it depends what sort of jewelry designer you are, 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. Ten things that cost £10,000. 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.
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A
Many 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.
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F
We talked about the difference between brand and branding. Marketing is. Is another area where, depending on who you talk to in that or in that, in that industry, you will get their perspective on how the, how the marketing works.
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A
So what's the difference between branding and marketing then, in your view?
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F
So brand. Brand is. That is. Is how you get that thought into people's heads. Marketing. 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 to. About marketing to finance directors. And he said that.
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A
Go on.
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F
The definition of marketing you should use is that marketing is the sourcing and harvesting of cash flow. 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. And techniques.
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Sourcing and management of cash flow.
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Servicing, harvesting and harvest.
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Sorry.
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So come up with creative ways.
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Sourcing and harvesting of cash flow.
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Harvest. Harvest that cash out in the marketplace from, from the audience.
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A
It's there you want to bring it.
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F
In and then deliver it to the finance directors as cash flow. Now, to me, when you go and talk To a marketing person, you'll, you'll get their particular lens on their particular discipline within marketing. You'll get 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.
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A
But that's quite hard to then link to putting a Guinness ad on the telly, isn't it? I suppose. How did the finance director swallow this?
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F
Well, I think, I think, you know, as long as you can start to demonstrate, you know, the overall mix of, you know, 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 an ah, no one's ever explained marketing to me like that before.
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A
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 how we're going to grow this business, reach more customers and be super relevant. Thanks for listening to Summer Takeaways. I'm your host, James Reed, chairman and CEO of Reed, a family run recruitment and philanthropy company. If you'd like to find out more about Reid, all links are in the show notes. See you next time.