Founder’s Thoughts: How the business idea for Visuable have planted its seed.

January 2018

I’ve decided to start writing an entrepreneurial journal because I believe in writing things down and I want to capture and remember things that were happening along the way. Until now, I have been writing my thoughts down in countless notebooks – I usually fill out 3–4 per year and I will continue doing so, however I want to share some of my thoughts with the world too.

So far, writing things down has helped me in several ways: reflecting on my progress, brainstorming new ideas and turning those ideas into reality.

I am planning to write one article per month and create a collection of 12 issues over the year. I am planning to cover personal and business topics spanning from insights, through tips, advice and recommendations to lifestyle as an entrepreneur.

I will start this writing journey with an epic reflection. My 2 words for 2018 are habits and leverage, and I feel that this journal can help me with both.

For those who don’t know me, a short intro:

My name is Lidia. I am the founder and a Brand Expert at Visuable, specialising in:

Defining and clarifying personal and business brands
Developing authentic brand image with distinct personality
Increasing brand value through design that builds trust and credibility
Boosting brand influence, expert profile and recognition online

My company, Visuable offers consulting, brand design, brand photos, web design and marketing packages to influencers and experts, small businesses with a unique concepts, and trusted companies that have commercialised on their passion, values and personality and turned their expertise into their offering.

In a nutshell: We visualise and bring to life the essence of your brand, showcasing your expertise, increasing the value in what you offer and ensuring that you are seen through a lens of desire by your ideal clients. We make you Visuable – so that you can connect with, and become irresistible to your desired audience.

The BUSINESS IDEA

“What started three years ago as a freelance career in photography and web design, has now transformed into an international brand agency backed by a team of experts”.

In 2015 the idea for Visuable started to plant its seeds in my mind whilst at my full-time job for Women Outside The Box – a start-up networking organisation supporting small businesses in the South West. That’s when I first noticed that our company and also our members companies struggled to get traction online.

Everyone seemed to use ancient, clunky websites that were held hostage by old-school developers who would’t provide full admin access to their client’s. Moreover, these guys had no idea about digital customer journeys, purposeful design or the rapidly changing needs and directions of early stage companies. Having experienced the issue first hand in the company I worked for, I knew the negative impact it was having on our business.

The main problem was that our website was constantly outdated, as our start-up company pivoted daily, and it was practically impossible to update it, without spending a substantial amount of money, for the type of updates that one should be able to do by themselves. It was 2015 after all, and with the rise of online CMS platforms, such as Squarespace, we were entering a digital transformation revolution and hard coded html websites were quickly becoming a thing of the past.

What’s more, the online presence within the Bristol based small business arena in general felt soulless, somehow corporate, lacked personality and any sort of differentiation. As a result, this was preventing business owners from being able to express their true essence, develop the feeling of trust and familiarity and ultimately causing them to fail to engage their online audiences.

Having studied Digital Media and Culture at university, coming from creative background as a photographer, and having developed several of my own freelancer websites, I knew there was a better way to create business websites and showcase companies online, and I was determined to make it happen.

I tested out my vision for a more visual, personable and accessible online presence for small businesses whilst still in full-time employment, through the launch of our then online advertising platform – Sourceabl. I lead the brand and creative concept for this new project, and worked closely with our web development agency to create a website that bursts with personality, engages the audience, and is build in a way that allows us to easily adapt and expand as our company grows or pivots.

When we launched Sourceabl to the public the reaction was amazing – everyone complimented the simplicity of design, the distinctiveness of the brand personality, and commented on how it visually conveyed what we’re about in a fraction of a second. What’s more, I’ve planned for a website structure that was easy to navigate through, and allowed for changes and updates, without having to mess with the code or spend a small fortune – it was a digital brand design perfection. I was feeling very proud. Despite this, due to the lack of start-up funding both Women Outside the Box and Sourceabl closed down in May 2015 and I found myself out of a job… But I had a new business idea.

In my next journal entry, I’ll explain how I went about testing my assumptions and bringing Visuable to the market as a freelance offering, and also how I got distracted along the way and accidentally became a CEO of a tech start-up whose founders were on a quest to develop the world’s first flying camera. The camera never managed to fly and a Chinese group beat us to it. You can now buy a similar drone design to ours in your nearest Apple store.

Luckily for me, Visuable’s early adopters pulled me out of tech start-up distraction, back towards my vision of creating a company that helps business owners get their brands right.

Achievements

2017 has been a great year for my team at Visuable. In fact, our list of achievements was so long that it took me half a day to write it down. Reflecting on the year that just passed is one of my favourite things to do on the 31st of December, I do it every year from the ‘Palm Tree Room’ (the ‘Palm Tree Room’ is the small front sitting room in my partner’s parents house in Cyprus — I love working from there as it has a giant Palm Tree right outside which never fails to put a smile on my face (I adore palm trees) and the sun gently makes its way in throughout the day and spills its warm light around. Anyway, back to achievements.

Among many, the key things that we’ve achieved in 2017 are:

Joined Entrepreneurial Spark Business Accelerator “Sprint” Programme in February 2017 with 90 other businesses, progressed to “Enable” in May as 1 out of 20 businesses, and finally progressed to “Grow” as 1 out of 3 businesses. It was when I got accepted onto that third stage of E-Spark when I realised that I am onto something really good—the team E-Spark powered by NatWest have put their faith into my business idea and gave me an exclusive pass towards further growth with their support. I would never have done it without my amazing enabler, Olly Reid, who challenged me to grow my mindset. He expected consistency and demanded that I step-up as a business leader, whilst supporting me along the way.

Our team has grown from just me to 7. I’ll share more insights later, for now all I want to say is that I am so proud that I managed to create 2 full-time jobs and several part-time opportunities within my own company — and that I feel super lucky to have been able to offer them to some pretty amazing people. My biggest challenge when I graduated from University was to obtain work experience, and this is exactly what drove me to start up my business in the first place— I could not find an employer who was willing to take on a young graduate with no experience, so I ended up as a creative freelancer working crazy amount of hours, and hardly making a living. That’s why I am committed to offering quality work-experience opportunities to students and young grads, and helping them to enter the job market. Students that come to us are amazing — they are dedicated, passionate and committed to continues learning and doing the best job possible. They pick up digital skills really fast, and very often introduce me to new things too! This month, I’ve had to start a waiting list of students who expressed interest in interning with us as we’re getting so many inquiries that unfortunately we are unable to accommodate all of them straight away.

Featured in some pretty cool interviews including: Q&A with Ladybossblogger, Q&A with Jennifer Hamley, Q&A with Rin Hamburgh, Q&A with Alison Edgar, Digital Leader Q&A with Business West, Start me up e-book by Enterprise Nation, and was named one of top 8 female marketeers. I also shared my branding insight in Facebook live interview with Entrepreneurs Godmother.

Joined Export4Growth Programme by Business West that provides me with business coaching and first-hand advice on how to expand internationally — our brilliant advisors are Karen Knight, Fiona Parnell and Simon Bruce. We’re also working closely with Gabriella Cox (Business West) and Stalo Demosthenou (Cyprus Chamber of Commerce & Industry) under Enterprise Europe Network Programme, to create connections with the most amazing partners and clients in Cyprus. This programme is really awesome, if you are interested to know more, just ask me and I’ll introduce you to people who are waiting to help your business grow in Europe (for FREE). When it comes to export, we’re currently serving clients in 4 countries — UK, Cyprus, Poland and Denmark.

Collaborating with some amazing brand partners — launched VFactor Competition to give away £7000 rebrand to one business owner with a massive vision, alongside Kimba Digital Marketing and Rin Hamburgh & Co, run a Brand Marketing workshop to share my knowledge on how to give your brand an edge and grow your business using strategic visual — this workshop was as part of Come Network With Me the Expert Series, founded by Sarah Cook and I am pleased to tell you that I’ve been invited to run another one in 2018.

We’re learning from the best in Bristol when it comes to business coaching and training. Among many my top go-to experts are: Tamsin Acheson, founder of The Business Haven — business coaching for start-ups, scale-ups and team-ups. Jen Wagstaff, founder of Creative Mind — sales training for top performers. Sarah Cook, founder of CNWM and an awesome social media strategist and mentor.

2018 Goals

Goals need to be SMART. Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. I have some pretty ambitious goals for this year, so I am going to break them down into smaller manageable steps, and try to make them happen.

Personal Engagement. 2017 was really busy project wise and I didn’t manage to engage with the business community personally as much as I would have liked to. So one of my goals for 2018 is to meet more people, collaborate on more projects and put myself forward for more public speaking gigs — I have a target for one per month.

Service Range Expansion. We’ve added several great new services to our range but due to a high volume of projects we had last year were not able to do proper marketing launches for any of them. In 2018, we’ll be launching ‘Define Your Brand’ — a self lead online facility to help you get clear on your brand foundation which you can also pair up with Brand Clarity consultation call, if you need 1:1 support. We’ve developed a ‘Brand Design Package’ for those who fancy creating an iconic brand identity. And last but not least — I’ve introduced ‘Brand Marketing Sessions’ to help you grow an awesome brand online. We’re also working on a monthly ‘Brand Management Package’ for those who are looking for ongoing support.

Cyprus Expansion. As some of you know, this year I’ve decided to launch internationally and partially move to the Mediterranean. Going forward, I’ll be spending 4 out of 12 months in the sunny Cyprus. I just wrapped up my first visit and so far, it’s been a success — thanks to Enterprise Network Europe I am now connected with several potential clients and collaborators.

Leadership. I am committed to being the best leader I can be to my team. With this in mind, I’ll be seeking to access leadership training and educational materials on an ongoing basis. I’ve already filled my Audiable library with many interesting titles such as: “Leaders Eat Last” by Simon Sinek and “Lean In” by Sheryl Sandberg. I also became a member of the “Lean In Bristol” circle which I highly recommend!

Team of Experts. I am committed to growing my team of experts. We already have some pretty cool people on board but we’re always on a lookout for fresh talent with creative and digital skills. We are a fun, forward-thinking and an innovative company who value driven, dedicated and passionate people. We hire on personality, not skills (as those we can teach you) so if you think you’ve got what it takes to join the dream team behind the screen, get in touch!

Personal Goals. One of my New Years resolutions is to set time aside for me instead of setting my needs aside. With this in mind, I also have a new rule — strictly no work on evenings and weekends. Long working hours I’ve been putting in over the last couple of years to get Visuable of the ground started to affect my wellbeing, so I am changing things this year. As entrepreneurs we have to wear many hats and often work around the clock to keep our businesses running smoothly. This leads to a burnout which can seriously affect our health and eventually cause our businesses to fail. I don’t want this to happen to me, so I am taking the necessary steps to prevent it. Growing the team and delegating responsibilities is the first step towards reclaiming some time for myself.

Lidia
Founder & Brand Expert