Founder's Thoughts – A Journey to Leadership

FEBRUARY 2018

Becoming a leader is a journey of a thousand miles.

2018 is the year when a lot of things have changed for me. My team became 10 people and we were getting busier and busier. I was now responsible not only for planning my workload, but also for planning the workload of everyone else.

First thing I did was set the aims and goals for the year. I created a simple spreadsheet on our google drive and wrote down 10 aims that I wanted to achieve this year which would become my Key Performance Indicators (KPI). I then identified 3 Key Result Areas (KRA) for each of my 10 KPI’s that would help me achieve my goals for the year.

I’ve included some of my usual strategic business goals like personal brand, marketing, sales, product development, project delivery and systems, but I noticed that this year, I also had several new areas that I needed to focus on. Those were the Company Culture, HR and Training.

When you are running your business just by yourself, the only things you have to think about is creating a great product, identifying people who need it, creating a great brand and marketing systems to attract them, and delivering your product to your clients in the best way you can (which is exactly what my old goals were, when I first started my business).

When you get really busy and start taking people on with the view of freeing some of your time and making your life easier, it suddenly becomes apparent that in fact your life just got a whole lot more difficult. You are now not only managing and developing yourself but also making sure that your employees work days are planned as well, that they are on board with your vision, receive sufficient training and support, feel happy with their roles, have a purpose, and more importantly, that there is enough money in the bank to pay their salaries.

In fact this brings to mind a famous saying by Fred Wilson: “A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank”.

February 2018 is the time when I stopped being the Head Creative behind Visuable and became a Creative Director and CEO. My new role required me to quickly develop a whole new skill-set spanning from big picture planning, through to team training. It was exciting and terrifying all at once, but I was up for a challenge and I wanted to be the best leader possible for my growing team of digital creatives.

Growing my TEAM

I’ve joined Entrepreneurial Spark Business Accelerator in February 2017, because I found myself not keeping up with my workload, and I needed support in optimising, growing and scaling my business. Entrepreneurial Spark powered by NatWest is a great programme which focuses on a helping entrepreneurs develop a winning mindset, leadership skills, take on staff, and become more credible and confident business owners.

The Entrepreneurial Spark, and my mentor Olly specifically, were were key in helping me to let go of my role as a Head Creative, start seeing myself as a business leader, and take on staff to help me deliver the creative services and grow the business.

I hired my first part-time employee, a marketing executive Becky in April through a match-funded UWE internship scheme. Becky was my marketing intern at Women Outside the Box and also at the tech start-up Aliofly so when it came to bringing somebody brilliant on board who understood Visuable ethos, voice and style and could hit the ground running with zero training time, I knew it could only be her. With a marketing degree from UWE Bristol and professional experience within Intel, Becky brought some pretty amazing digital marketing expertise on board. Since she joined, our marketing finally became consistent, as I could not keep up with consistent posting when I was by myself, since I needed to focus on delivering the creative work.

As Visuable started to get busier and busier due to increased exposure through all the marketing activity we were doing, it became apparent that I now need support within creative department too, as I could not keep up with the edits and website builds. Luckily to me, I was tracked down and approached by Michelle — a creative design wizard who was looking for an opportunity. Michelle quickly picked up Visuable website design style and within a matter of months we’ve also expanded our offering to include our new brand design package as we now had the skills to deliver brand design in-house and did not need to outsource any longer.

My third member of the team was Louise, who used to be my business partner in a photographic company which we shut down as neither of us had the time to run it. With 12 years experience as a professional retoucher, working for top brands like Damien Lovegroove and Clifton Photographic Company (where we met originally), Louise was exactly who I needed, to make sure we’re delivering the highest standards of photographic work.

As we were getting even busier, I got more people on board — my number four recruit was Charlie who used to work with me at Women Outside the Box. Charlie took on a role of Online PR, and helped us spread the word about Visuable far and wide. We were now 5, and I knew there was still one more role that I needed to fill — the photographer role. This was by far the most difficult one for me to stop doing, as all my clients could not imagine having somebody else to take their photos (however I had no choice, if I were to grow a sustainable digital agency). So I knew that, if I am to have someone to fill the brand photographer role, this someone needs to be the best of the best.

I have had several people, and none of them really hit the spot for me until I met Corali. The minute we met, I knew I have found her. She was nice, personable and we got on right there and then. We’ve spent a couple of hours chatting over a coffee and looking through Visuable shoots and I already knew she will be the one, so I invited her to one of my shoots. Corali didn’t disappoint — she was chatty with clients when she needed to be and hard working when it was time to work. And the best of all — when we compared the photos I could not tell the difference — she captured emotions really well and our creative styles were in perfect harmony. She was a keeper!

Whilst I did really well at assembling an impressive team of part-time and freelance specialists throughout 2017, my mentor Olly was really pushing me to hire full-time, and insisted that without full-time staff my business will not progress to where I want it to go.

Encouraged by Olly, I’ve decided to take the leap towards the unknown and hired my first member of full-time staff in January 2018 via the Professional Apprentices company in Bristol which is a career change programme for young people who want to take on a new vocation whilst studying for their degree and learning on a job at the placement company. Having trained several student interns over the years into star digital creatives, and connecting personally with the company mission (helping young people get into the career ladder they aspire through work-based training), it just felt right to get my first full-time employee that way. After all, Visuable was born from my own need to create a career path for myself that I will love, since I could not find a company that would give a young and driven graduate with no experience a chance (look at me now — they could have not been more wrong!). I truly believe that young, driven, creative people with no professional experience can achieve amazing things with a little mentoring and training. The team I’ve trained so far is already revolutionising my business!

Adam, the founder of Professional Apprentices helped me tremendously in matching us with a the right candidates. He held my hand throughout the process and handled the entire recruitment and HR, so I did not have to worry about a thing! He also reassured me that I am making the right decision whilst signing on the dotted line. Amy, who I hired has turned out pretty awesome! With a degree in photography, several years of professional experience in customer service, and a recently undertaken digital marketing course, Amy’s career path felt familiar. In fact it mirrored my exact career path before I launched Visuable. Amy is now the first point of contact to all our customers, and as a result of her top customer service skills, and her super friendly attitude, we’re now more engaged online, we generate more inbound enquiries, while also keeping in touch with our existing and past clients more. Thanks to Amy’s visual creative background, our content marketing became even more creative and engaging and we finally have an in-house photographer on board, and are able to organise internal photo-shoots whenever we like. Amy also contributes to shaping our company culture. Last week, she’s organised a pancake day for the team, and surprised me with a birthday present and a card from the entire team!

We also had two Erasmus students joining us recently to complete an international placement funded by the European Union. They tracked us down and came all the way from France and Italy to become part of our team.

Manon, the French student is an experienced market researcher, having undertaken a role within that field at a UK company before. Neomi, the Italian student is a designer and a hobbyist photographer with a strong passion for digital marketing.

Both Manon and Neomi turned out to be a perfect fit for our growing team. They are initially staying with us for 4 months, but are both keen to stay in Bristol and carry on working for Visuable which makes me very happy and also determined to be able to keep them. They are both great and bring such a diverse strategic, digital and creative skill-set to the team! So there it is — a story of how Visuable team has grown from just me to 10 awesome digital creatives in under a year.

The unexpected benefits of saying ‘NO’

I love what I do, and I love helping my clients improve their brands. However, in the past this has lead me to over-delivering on my promises, and offering way too much of my time without asking for anything in return. As a result, I ended up working endless hours, staying up late at night, and sacrificing my weekends, as I could not keep up with the amount of work I had to do. My clients loved it, as I was offering such a great value for money and so many added bonuses.

personal branding identity and design in bristol

I realised that I can not carry on like this, when it got to the point that I did not take a day off for 14 days straight, and I worked every day from 9am until 1am in the morning… I had so much to do that I literally did not stop for 2 weeks. This then took a big hit on my wellbeing, as I didn’t take any breaks from work, did not exercise, and only ate quick meals over my keyboard. My mentor at E-Spark have sent me home one day, as he saw me looking extremely exhausted. He then demanded that I take compulsory time off to recover, and that I bring more people on board.

Unfortunately it was all my fault as I did not set clear boundaries of where my role starts and ends… in a digital creative agency like Visuable, there are many grey areas when it comes to project work, and you have to state clearly which bits of work you are responsible for, and which ones are not included in the project fee. I did not do that for a very long time, and as a result, ended up saying yes and accumulating many jobs, which were not my responsibility, but I had no choice but say yes to them, to ensure a successful completion of the project.

Once I started saying no to the tasks which were not my responsibility, I was met with some resistance. Some of my clients were surprised that I will not help them with absolutely everything to do with their online presence, but rather only do the things that are included in my packages. Initially, I found it difficult to be assertive, but I stuck to my guns and learned to clearly explain that the work I am being asked to do is not part of my project fee, so I can’t do it unless, I get paid extra for it.

Being assertive when it comes to the scope of work became much easier, as soon as I’ve grown my team and had to start paying people for the work they do. Suddenly, I realised that offering unpaid extras to my clients is costing me money, and I absolutely have to stop right now.

Today, we have clear service agreements in place which states what we do, and what we don’t, as part of our project fee. When we are being asked to provide extras which fall into grey areas, I negotiate and either ask for additional supplement or something of value in return.

You would be surprised how much you can negotiate to get back for your time and efforts, if only you get the courage to ask for it. Once I got myself an equivalent of a couple of days in skill exchange from several providers. In the past, it would only be me working, and others gaining, but now I am finally getting something back! This makes me feel that my hard work is appreciated, and I have something to look forward to in exchange for my good will and extra time.

Lidia
Founder & Brand Expert