No business is an island, we’re all connected and in this post I’m singing the praises of three businesses each embodying different qualities that might be worth doing to a greater extent in your business.

Stretching thinking – D’Almaine

My work straddles B2C and B2B worlds and when I decided it was time to put a corporate face on my B2B work I called designer Gail D’Almaine. The bright, warm creative and comes highly recommended and her work speaks for itself. She shoots people, places and lions – inside their cages. Talk about edge. The quality I admire in Gail is taking a client’s thinking (mine in this case) and playing with it like putty, pulling it this way and that to come up with something better than the starting point. She’s expert in visual representation – I am not – and her worth is producing something better than I could have come up with myself both in terms of the idea and the execution.

Linking Gail’s approach to my profesional practice I reflect that people are complex and rarely is client time spent exclusively on the matters they originally called me about. It’s my job to listen between the words, gently probe and tease out ways forward on other issues that come up for clients as they talk. I take it for granted that’s what all coaches do but feedback from my team coaching work suggests it’s precious because not everyone does it.

Delivering on time and to brief - Slurpy Studios

Working alongside D’Almaine to bring my corporate presence to life at the end of last year was Aaron Wood of Slurpy Studios. Aaron took Gail’s brief like a pro and delivered exactly what was asked of him in the time-frame we agreed. He’s a creative in his own right and I wondered how he’d find taking another designer’s brief and simply churning it out. He took it like a professional and delivered. Thank you.

Exceeding expectations - alldayPA

With more calls flowing into my office, last year was the right time to engage alldayPA to smile down the phone when I’m not there to do it myself. I’ve used an answering service in the past and, whilst no complaints with them, what I love about the alldayPA team is their technology which exceeded my expectations. I now get your messages both e-mailed and sent by SMS as soon as you’ve left them. This is terrific as it means even when I’m out and about in places without internet connectivity I get the SMS and can give you a buzz when I’m free.

I started by saying we’re all connected and the implicit message is that it pays to help one another. I’m sure you buy that one but how about the notion that in your specific field there are no competitors only conspirators? Try it out, you might find good things happen when you see that you’re all in it together – especially if your business is a new concept without a ready market. You and your co-conspirators’ job is to grow the market and all take a share.

Or am I nuts?

My corporate ‘face’ as designed by D’Almaine and delivered by Slurpy Studios is www.talentkeepers.co.uk

Share this: