- Please tell us about yourself and your business background.
Business reputation is my specialist subject.
Reputation is ‘everything you say, everything you do and everything others say about you.’
Public relations is the discipline governing reputation. As a PR consultant who started at Harrison Cowley/Saatchi & Saatchi back in the 1980s, I set up Kinetic Communications – my own consultancy – in 2004, and it was the first to guarantee results at the start of a campaign.
So many businesses are ‘blah, blah, blah’. They don’t stand out or stand up for anything. They churn out content that any of their competition could. When you speak to everyone, you speak to no one.
Business is tough. We believe, if you’re a decent business – that means you look after your people, make sustainable profits and do as little harm to the environment in the process – you deserve to be trusted.
Highly trusted companies and brands have very little gap between what they promise and what they deliver.
Yet, if you ask the most basic questions of the frontline teams in many organisations, they can’t answer:
- Why are you business?
- What does this business do better than any other?
- How do you do things around here? Which are the values you hold dear?
- What is the most common problem faced by inexperienced business people and how can this be overcome?
They don’t know where to start.
As a start-up, they may have taken that leap of faith, and the enormity of what they’ve taken on hits them like a train.
~Business Game Changer Special Promotion~
They may have a great idea, or be a master of their trade, but they’ve little or no idea as to how to make money from it.
They need to hone it. Get it practically perfect so people queue up to pay handsomely for it and tell all their friends.
Even when trading profitably, many struggle to see how they will scale the business to the extent that it can afford to pay their team proper salaries. To achieve that, you need to systemize your business such that it’s profitable.
Systems become key when you’re more than five people. Many business owners struggle with envisaging a system and then bringing it into reality. Systems make the magic happen.
Too few businesses systematically:
- Share compelling, helpful content to attract the right prospects.
- Share that content consistently across their owned, earned and paid media.
- Qualify sales leads rather than trying to do everything.
- Organise and nurture sales leads. Even if it’s just using a simple spreadsheet or a comprehensive CRM system, you need to track sales leads into your business, nurture hot prospects to become customers and eventually advocates.
The solution:
Reputation is a broad and complex subject.
From day one, your PR checklist should run along these lines:
- Vision – answer ‘why are we doing this?’
- Stand out – answer ‘what are we going to do better than anyone else?’
- Values – answer ‘which behaviours do we expect of anyone who works here?’
- Messages – answer ‘what do we want people to think, feel and believe about our company?’
- Measurable objectives –
- where are we now?
- where do we want to get to?
- how will we measure how well we’re doing?
- Name and corporate identity – remember your email template is more important than your business card.
- Website with Google Analytics.
- Social media handles.
- Some sort of system to capture sales leads and when they convert into customers.
Get these right and you’ll be well ahead of the pack.
- What are the most important things to consider before starting your own business?
“Make sure your ‘ins’ are more than your ‘outs’,” that’s what my Great Aunt Lil said when I set up Kinetic. She was a trailblazer – a company director in the 1950s. Such sage advice. Be very wary if you’re having to borrow to set up.
Turnover is vanity. Profit is sanity. Cash is reality.
Regards every other decision, “gut over nut,” is DJ Chris Evans’ advice. Our intuition often serves us far better than our rationale. We buy with our hearts and justify with logic.
I hope the following questions help sift the great from the average business ideas:
- Do I have an original idea?
- Can I make my idea stand out?
- Am I prepared to work all day and night for my idea?
- Is it worth giving up a regular salary for the uncertainty of entrepreneurial adventure?
- How easily can my idea be copied?
- How long will my initial investment bank-roll me?
- When must we start making a profit?
- How will I find people to scale the business?
- How much of this can I do myself?
- Where will I need professional help?
- Do I have a plan?
- Am I able to work the plan?
- What shall I call my business?
- What website URL is available?
- What evidence and how best can I show we can be trusted?
- People who know me, trust me, how will I turn strangers into advocates?
But Henry Ford’s comments resonates with most business-owners: “Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re probably right.”
Everyone will tell you something’s impossible until it’s done!
- What is the best way to recruit/hire members of your team? For example, should you recruit based on their attitude or experience?
Attitude every time.
When I’ve hired on experience, you often find people have legacy issues, ie when they say, ‘I’ve always done it this way’.
To progress means you want fresh blood in your organisation to challenge how things can be done better or differently. However, the new recruit – no matter how experienced – should sign up to following your systems consistently.
We guarantee our results, for which we’ve developed an ISO 9001:2015 enterprise-wide system. Everything’s rigorously quality-controlled. It’s not for everyone but it suits those who seek excellence in their work.
It’s always good to have a mix in a business, but we prefer to grow our own talent. That way, you find people who buy into your ‘why’, ie your reason for being. That’s the heartstrings of the business. Then they need to prove they don’t just like your code of conduct, they can cite how they regularly behave like that already.
A good test is ‘would I want to spend a long-haul flight with this person?’ if the answer’s ‘no’, it’s unlikely to work out.
At interview, the key is getting people relaxed enough to be themselves.
We run all manner of tests to check for aptitude, but we still struggle to judge how well someone will fit into the team until they start.
A good test is to check your values against stories the candidates tell. At the first interview, we ask for a story to illustrate our values:
- Care
- Rigorous
- Straight-talking
- Pioneering
For instance, our first value is ‘care’.
When a new recruit was looking to join us, I asked her to illustrate how she cares. She told a story of when she was in sixth form, she decided to get a job in a pub as she was painfully shy (that’s a useful insight to see how she’s prepared to push herself out of her comfort zone).
She goes on to explain how she sees a couple regularly coming in for Sunday lunch. Then they stop. When she sees the lady with a friend one day many weeks afterwards, she mentions how ‘I’ve not seen you for some time’.
The lady replies that her husband died, and she doesn’t like to eat alone. That’s when our new recruit volunteers to share Sunday lunch with the widow.
Then ask questions at interviews two and three. By interview three, if they’re repeating the same story for a third time, you can tell that is a pretty rare behaviour for them and they might not be the right fit.
- How has the pandemic changed business?
Thank you, Covid-19, for radically changing how we work.
The technology has been around for years, but it took a pandemic to change our behaviours and bring about a radical shift in work/life balance. For many of us, the ability to choose when and where we work has been a long time coming, but let’s delight that it’s finally landed.
The obvious change Covid’s responsible for is that we’re working from home a lot more. It’s been a real eye-opener as to the riches that brings. Not just being able to dry your washing on the line! Your productivity when you’re free of interruptions and distractions sky-rockets.
We were all happy to do it when there was a pandemic on, so why not now? As we’re a consultancy selling time, we’ve timesheets to show how productive we are. We’ve never a missed a day from the moment Boris said, ‘if you can work from home, please do’.
We certainly don’t understand Elon Musk’s comment re: “pretend to work elsewhere.” That comment alone possibly wiped off millions of dollars in Tesla’s employer brand equity. Who wants to work for a leader who trusts you so little?
But we do agree an office – a secure base – is a thing of beauty. A safe space for us all to come together and make our little bit of alchemy happen. Getting everyone into the office for three days a week works well for us. We bounce off each other and it accelerates the rate at which new starters learn. McKinsey estimates that in advanced economics, 20% to 25% of workforces are working from home for three to five days a week.
You can feel the sea change in attitudinal shift in business.
We work across the world and business feels kinder these days – more patient in many regards (with our teams for instance) and possibly less tolerant in other regards.
It’s great when you win clients in the Americas or the Far East and no one expects you to show up or a meeting and understand it will cost a lot more if you do. There’s been a reality check.
But I think the biggest shift is how much more REAL or in-touch business has become as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.
It’s not just at Kinetic, but our clients and partners too. We’re far more in-tune with each other’s situation. Physically, mentally, socially.
The great resignation
I think covid made everyone take stock of their lives. For many of them that led them to the Great Resignation.
Many who were just going to work for the money – that’s 80% of the UK workforce if Gallup’s got it right – found other ways to make money or do the maths and realised that retirement was the key out of a job they endured rather than enjoyed.
There’s a million fewer workers in the UK workforce since Covid. That’s an historic exodus form the UK workforce. But that has opened up opportunities for people to join the workforce and the move to new roles for those who remained in work.
The power of face to face
Another joy arising from a pandemic is how Covid’s made us appreciate the power of meeting face to face, the simple handshake, high-five or just making direct eye contact let alone the power of a hug when you need it.
Zoom and TEAMS are great, but they’ve yet to crack the spontaneity and pitter patter of natural conversational rhythm or ‘smellyvision’! Every time we can, we prefer to meet face to face to get the full blast of someone’s physical presence!
Culture is built on so many more cues than a teleconference can convey.
As leaders, let’s ensure we don’t take for granted the relationships we built face-to-face and keep control of our culture that binds us all together.
- What is the most important lesson you have learnt as a result of your business? This may also be advice you can offer to budding game changing business professionals.
My biggest lesson is that we’re capable of far more than we know.
Running a business and all that takes – negotiating with ball-breakers, leading and looking after people, keeping lots of plates spinning while still enjoying the moment – all that makes you strong. Strong, not in a tough, hard-headed way, but an ‘I’ve got this’ sort of way. Very little phases me now.
When the chips are down, you’ll find fortitude or muddle through. Equally, when you’re on a high, you’ll know not to get too carried away or become complacent as it can all turn on a pin.
Now in my fourth career decade, Covid gave me my worst ever day’s business. Four accounts called to break terms in one day. My co-director asked, ‘how are we going to get through this?’ I couldn’t fib, I said ‘I don’t know but we will, somehow’. It turned out that Covid opened new doors for us and financially one of our best years. Gifts can sometimes come in strange wrapping.
Running your own business stretches you out of your comfort zone and makes you feel alive, which brings to mind Helen Keller’s words: “life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all”.
Every time we’re out of our comfort zone, we’re stretching ourselves and learning. I love that.
Caution always has its place, but at some point, you need to commit. Just do it.
Take your great idea and test the waters with your friends and family, but don’t rely on them. Ask strangers if your idea is a great idea.
Be bold because that’s where you’ll find the genius and magic to your business.
But in the end, it’s up to you. No excuses. Go for it.
If you need support to make your business stand out and establish you reputation, visit Kinetic Communications or get in touch on 0121 212 6250.
