So what brought you to Bizily?
Bizily is a collection of insight from my experience as an entrepreneur. Whenever you try to do something alone you are faced with multitude issues. Work areas, legal issues, business development, operational challenges... Being an entrepreneur is hard. I am using my experience to create something that addresses the problems faced by people trying to grow a small business.
What has been your most persistent frustration as an entrepreneur?
Basically, everything outside of the core business. The things that you don’t naturally excel at are the hardest to get to. They become chores. The risk then, is that they don’t get done at all and you quickly realize that your talent and the great work you do for clients is only a part of the picture. What doesn't get done for most is sales and business development. My guess is that this comes naturally to less than 10% of entrepreneurs and it is a real obstacle to the other 90% of us. The relationships around the business that drive sales and are there but people need help turning them into a pipeline.
Bizily is a creative business solution for creative entrepreneurs. How have you applied your own creativity to Bizily?
Everybody is creative in one way or another. We often think of creative business as being associated with things like design, but creativity is how you come up with solutions. Creativity, for me, means maximizing what you have to get what you want. That is what Bizily does for small business. It recognizes and organizes your relationships and builds in tools that let you get the most out of them in a seamless way.
So it sounds like relationships are at the heart of the Bizily method?
Everything about a small service business comes down to people. Your ability to get things done rests on having the right relationship in place because there is so much interaction between the provider and the customer. Clients want a mutually beneficial and productive relationship with you so the connections that you form with clients and other vendors in your industry, as well as with friends and associates are likely to be the key to success in your business. Building and strengthening ties is the definition of business development for small service companies.
Biz looks completely different to any other small business application – what is it all about?
I think that is the difference between offering a tool and offering an experience. We are not interested in patching together bits and pieces of a solution but want to create a holistic experience based on the assumption that you are already doing a great job serving your clients and simply need to gather the benefits associated with that. We have created a map that allows you to quickly understand the proximity to your relationships to your business. That helps you identify existing connections that could deliver business if nurtured as well as helping you define good prospects for new relationships to grow. The whole thing is visually very different to anything else out there because we are looking at the situation from a unique perspective. We believe you are already have what you need to grow and we want to help you use it.
You give a lot of credit to your team. What were you looking for when you hired them?
Primarily what I look for are people who are different to me. Entrepreneurs tend to fall in love with their own ideas and hire people who mirror them. I think this is a mistake. Direction comes from the core beliefs of a founder but a lot of voices are needed for good decision making around that. My role is to bring the smartest people together and get them thinking about my vision. Then I need to choose from amongst the ideas that emerge and define the evolution of the company. This is more interesting than simply plugging my own idea and it gets better results.
Who stands out for you in terms of mentors? Why are you an entrepreneur?
The person who comes to mind is my uncle. He was a businessman when I was growing up so I saw him build his company and was inspired by that. He was a role model, not perfect by any means but a 30 something guy who was traveling around the world building a global business. Seeing that made me realize that your horizons can stretch beyond your immediate environment. It gave me an extension to my perspective. At this point, being an entrepreneur comes so naturally to me that I cant think about doing anything else.
So tell us a bit about your launch and what to expect in February.
Well, the first 3 or 4 months of the beta launch is going to be about learning from our users. How do we take the product to a place where it really reflects the needs that are out there? Ultimately, what matters is how many people benefit from what we have built. Of course we will go out through the traditional channels but our success will depend on how well we listen to our customers and how well we respond to them. It is never black and white; if something doesn’t work you don’t scrap it. You try to figure out what will work and keep changing until it does.
Interview by Sara Batterby
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