What flavour?

With a background in marketing & strategy this forms the core of my knowledge base. I have experience in both starting businesses and growing them and a particular interest in how one relates conceptually to one's business - how personal or separate it is, the model in one's head as to what business looks like etc etc. This means that the areas I work on with clients most commonly include:

• Structuring a broad vision into bite sized goals for the short and medium term
• Highlighting practicalities that will need to be addressed as they grow and recommending potential solutions – from accounting systems to job descriptions and approaches to hiring staff
• Business plan development – detailed for 12 months, broader brush for 3-5 years
• Conceptualisation of business models appropriate to the way you wish to operate
• Coaching on bridging from Creative work into new sectors i.e. the translation activity that is required to learn to speak and act in different sectors & environments (looking for the difference in use of language & jargon and the different definitions of truth, trust, timeframe, credibility etc)
• Implementation advice & sounding board – a business person to put questions to around implementation, routes to market, client management
• Marketing strategy, implementation (& where relevant launch planning) – making specific use of my marketing background to help in the development of a launch plan
• Undertaking a skills (and if appropriate a board) audit
• Networking coach – guiding individuals & teams in how they present themselves in different arenas and in methods for seeking out new opportunities

Questions to the recipient(s):

• What are the top 3 things you want to work on?
• What are your deadlines in the next few months (by which some of these development goals need to have been achieved)?
• What restrictions on your time might impact the way I work with you?
• What working structure is likely to result in the easiest working relationship?

It is not uncommon for the work that I do in this field to be paid for through one or more sets of Public funds, thus the questions to the funder include:

• What outputs would you like?
• Do you require some form of reporting – final or regular?
• Would you like to see a written business plan as one of the outputs?
• What timeframe are we considering?
• How many days are available?