Can't get you out of my head
How two words became a £250m venture
One day in 2007, Sir Alec Reed had an idea.
This was not unusual. I was working for Sir Alec at the time, and every time he came into the office he pulled out a notebook with three or four new ideas he wanted to test out.
On that day, he walked into the office and said to me, "We need a digital charity." I asked him what that meant, and he said he wasn't sure - but we should definitely think about it. So I started trying to work out what a ‘digital charity’ could look like.
This was 17 years ago, and there was no playbook for creating a ‘digital charity’. Trust me, I looked. My initial thought was that a pioneering American tech firm would have done something we could 'borrow', but it turned out that if we wanted to create a game-changing idea we would have to develop it from scratch.
Fast forward to today, and I find myself working with recruitment leaders who tell me they have great ideas - ways to add huge value to their clients around hiring and people strategy - but want support in turning those ideas into services and products.
One founder described his situation as, "hitting a brick wall with getting the thoughts out of my head and into an actionable plan." By using the skills I learned when working with Sir Alec Reed, I was able to translate that founder's ideas into a commercial model that added value to his clients - and win more exclusive and retained business in the process.
In my experience, most recruitment leaders have the potential to add incredible value to their clients. However, sometimes the knowledge, experience and ideas that make up that value is stuck in their head. With everything that needs doing to run a recruitment agency, it's hard to find the time to turn a spark of inspiration into fully fledged services that get clients excited to work with you. That's where I come in.
Taking that spark of inspiration from Sir Alec back in 2007, we built an online platform to match charities with donors. It was called The Big Give, and has since raised over £250m for thousands of charities.
If you have ideas in your head that you want to turn into commercial, successful, valuable services, simply reply to this email with IDEAS in the subject line and we can talk.
Jon
P.S. As you might expect, The Big Give didn't go from zero to £250m in one leap. The first version of the website focused on helping donors find charities - which worked, but didn't change the world - and it was only through testing different ideas and building on the initial foundations that it became a way for charities to raise large amounts of money quickly.
I often see new pricing models develop in the same way. The first version gives you the confidence and structure to talk more clearly about value with your clients, but the long term impact comes from having a strategy that you can build on.
Every bit of feedback your clients give you can feed back into your approach, so you're constantly improving your offering as well as your understanding of what your clients value.
If you have ideas in your head that you want to turn into commercial, successful, valuable services, simply reply to this email with IDEAS in the subject line and we can talk.