19 Feb Why I Chose to Become an A to Z Brand
If you had known me before 2005 while in Ethiopia, you may still recognize me as a researcher. If we had hung out or worked together before or around 2010, you might have identified me as a software engineer or an IT or Project Management Trainer. If we met between 2010 and COVID-19, you might still know me as a leadership coach, trainer, and consultant.
A lot has happened since COVID. I reinvented myself as an A to Z brand, based on my nickname, that provides holistic services to professionals, leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors. Of course, the journey began with me first growing holistically.
By the way, throughout my professional life, I resisted the pressures of my peers and mentors to specialize, pick a lane, and go all in. Even if I didn’t have any strong justifications for why, instinctively, I thought it wasn’t a good idea to be a one-trick pony.
Given what has been happening in recent years, including the emergence of AI, which will replace the jobs of many professionals and businesses, the decision to remain a generalist was a smart move. If AI takes away or does a better job than my company or I can do in one area or two, why go against the current? Many other lanes are left to pick and stay relevant, serving humanity in multiple ways. We don’t go out of business or start from scratch to learn something new for which we don’t have passion, expertise, experience, and competitive advantages…
Yesterday was a good testament to how a decision I made long ago to diversify my skillsets based on instinct alone paid off…
I had a fruitful conversation with a world-class professional I’ve known and admired for years. I can’t give details about the person and our exchanges, as any conversations with prospective and current clients are confidential.
However, let me give you some ideas. If this discussion had happened before COVID, we would most probably have discussed how my company and I could help by designing and delivering a workshop, coaching program, and/or facilitating a strategic planning session.
This time, I was helping the person to gain clarity on multiple fronts within a short period. To mention a few areas we covered:
1. The need to reserve the relevant domain names before they are taken and file a trademark to claim the legal right to the brand.
2. The importance of crafting the foundational documents such as Vision Impartation, Strategic Plan, and Business Plan.
3. The most efficient way to design the organizational structure, the need to draft a team charter to guide the founding team, identify the relevant systems and processes for each company function, and how to automate these systems and make it easy for the founder to lead, delegate, and track progress, etc.
4. Why it is crucial to conduct an early valuation of the business to know its market value, create a pitch deck, and outline the process to raise capital to quickly scale.
5. Choosing the right business model (how to make the company profitable), structuring the offers, and pricing the different services.
6. Making the website responsive and engaging (the current website is too static), opening social media accounts, creating CRM, eNewsletter, and automated emails to nurture subscribers, and unifying the company’s overall branding, marketing, and sales to make it easy for the founder to focus on the MAIN THING, giving this important responsibility to an agency to handle it.
6. And many more…
From this client’s perspective, I saved them their precious time, energy, and finances. More than that, some tips and guidance I offered could save him thousands of dollars and future headaches.
Mind you, this wasn’t even a paid coaching or consulting session. It was a FREE discovery conversation with me to identify areas where we can work together, without involving the team behind. Imagine how much we can help when we agree to work with his team and mine for a few weeks or months.
Whether you have known me in the past or not, let’s have a conversation to see how we may help you and/or your team achieve your goals without wandering around to find multitudes of vendors, googling to death to find answers online, or cutting the time and finance it takes you to meet your needs by more than half.
Reach out, and let’s talk—no strings attached, no commitment.